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!

12/28/19 card show report: 90s inserts rule at the end of 2019

As I mentioned in my last post covering my in-person trade with Paul, we hit up his (extremely) nearby show in Troy on the last Saturday in December, marking the second time in 2019 that I got to two shows in a month.  That ended up putting me over $200 in card spending for the month, the only time that happened last year, though I came within $1 on two other occasions.  There was plenty of good reason for that, though:  besides the two shows I finished up my COMC purchasing for my Christmas Cards.

Anyway, Paul made sure it was worth the trip for me in a few ways, starting with that trade.  Plus, as I also mentioned in that last post, we got to meet up with Chuck (C2Cigars) from TCDB, which was really cool.

He brought a nice little stack of TCDB customs I'd seen around the site, and I happily took an autographed version of the one you see above.  It's a nice reminder of getting to meet one of the nicer guys on the site, and I hope some of you on TCDB trade with him eventually.  He was nice enough to bring me something straight off my wantlist:  a 1957 Topps RC of former UM football player Lou Baldacci.  A terrific addition to my vintage and RC collections, it's my first of the FB/QB/HB/PK, which isn't surprising since he has all of three cards to his name--this one and a couple reprint versions Topps did in 1994.  It gives me a completed run on my Michigan Football RC project checklist from 1955-'94, a string of 78 players.  Thanks, Chuck!

After the meetup I hit up one of Paul's favorite sellers, a guy who's usually at Taylor, though I tend to spend my money there on my favorite dude's tables.  I believe I ended up with $10 worth of quarter cards, including a nice bunch of $0.25 hockey autos that might make for good trade bait.

Then we headed over to the table of a guy I hadn't met before.  Paul was nice enough to alert us to his crazy deals, and after talking to him he sounded like a guy having fun and just wanting to sell stuff at ridiculously low prices to people who'd appreciate it.  He didn't seem to be aware of the value of current stars and was checking a Beckett or some other price guide, generally in favor of the buyer.

I dropped $38 at his table on a few things for my self and some pretty nice trade bait, some of which will go out eventually, plus a few cards for Paul as well--call it a finder's fee!  Here's the stuff I took home with me:

The "90s inserts rule" tag portion of the post covers these two fun inserts from that era.  Mr. Padre's is a '96 Denny's Holograms Grand Slam Artist's Proof, which was fun since I didn't realize Pinnacle inserted those into the packs found at the restaurant known for its food being garbage.  It's Gwynn on a hologram insert made in the 90s so it's 100% gold to me.

Joining him is Ripken on a shiny (not that you can tell from the scan) chase card from '97 Circa called Icons.  In fact, it's funny looking at the image in this post and then down at the actual card with its reflective rainbow foil front.  Cal was indeed an icon of his era and the back of this surprisingly thin card lauds him for his professionalism during "the most celebrated baseball feat in recent history.  That's great, but I was already sold on 90s insert+Cal+shiny!

Next up we have a couple graded rookie year cards of Michigan QB Brian Griese.  Besides the fact that my opinion of grading couldn't get much lower, I just felt like it would be more fun to crack these and see them up-close, so that's exactly what I did, and grouped them with my other football pickup from the guy:

Fellow QB Todd Collins looks awesome on his own rookie year insert, an acetate die-cut 1995 Playoff Contenders chase card called Rookie Kickoff.  Reread that sentence and then try coming up with a scenario where that doesn't come home with me!  And now we get a better look at the Griese cards from '98.  Up top is a Finest Refractor from that year, and despite the lack of film it hasn't been peeled--it's the rarer No-Protectors version!  Fortunately I didn't have to take the grading company's word for it as these are easy to identify with one trait:  the No-Protectors have the same Refractory look on the back.  Please allow me to demonstrate with something that took enough effort that I'd better get a comment from Gavin:

Shiiiiiiny!  That pairs nicely with Griese's '98 SPx Finite RC (#1535/1998), which was a bit too reflectively to scan nicely.  With that one out of the way I'm short just six of his 39 first-years I'm chasing.  Plus I got to celebrate yet another milestone in 2019 by landing my 200th card of the '97 National Champ.  Woohoo!

This guy also had a binder full of completed and near done baseball and football insert and relic sets.  This Amani Toomer autograph is just my second signature of the former Giants WR, and it hails from 2000 Playoff Prestige's Team Checklists set.  It looks like the last 30 of them were signed, and that includes fellow Wolverines Elvis Grbac and Tyrone Wheatley, the latter of which I also own.  One of the reasons I spent a lot of time digging through this seller's cards is that I first asked him for a price on this one and he wanted $2.  Sir, you have my interest!

Last up from this seller was a very appropriate color for a parallel of a former Wolverine star.  Here's a beautiful Blue version of Marty Turco's 2003-04 O-Pee-Chee base, numbered up front 432/500.  As usual I'll happily laud Topps when they deserve it, and I'd argue that they knocked this one out of the park (though I'm not surprised since they were still putting effort into their releases back then).

On the way out I made sure to stop by the tables of a guy who always has a huge variety of BCW supplies and some miscellaneous other stuff, because he was asking $3 for opened factory sets of 1990 Topps.  That worked for me since the set definitely doesn't warrant paying shipping, which costs more than the worth of the set.

I had most of my PC guys' cards from this one (though not all, which I'll get to in a second!), but scoring the complete set filled a nice gap in my collection:  I now own complete Topps flagship sets from 1984-2010, a run I'm fairly proud of.  Plus I had plenty of fun getting this set all sorted and in order (they didn't ship that way, I believe) as that gave me a chance to take a closer look at all of the cards.

And, as I alluded to a minute ago, I did end up with a few new additions:  two of Tony Gwynn's issues--All-Star and regular--and one of Ripken, also the All-Star subset.

I'd call landing this much stuff at a show that hasn't had much for me in the past an unqualified success and definitely a great way to end 2019.  Many thanks to Chuck and Paul for a fun meetup!

As far as shows go I did get to Taylor this month but haven't decided what order I'm going to cover my in-hand stuff, so we'll see when I get to that.  In the meantime, here's to another great year of shows and trading!

2019 trade package #41: Scribbled Ink

My final trade cards of 2019 came courtesy of buddy of the blog and fellow Michigander (for a bit longer!) Paul of Scribbled Ink.  He's a busy dad so I try to meet up with him now and then if we get the chance, and as luck had it we were both available for his monthly neighborhood show in Troy on the last Saturday of December.  I don't tend to enjoy that show as much as the one I frequent in Taylor, though this one ended up working out quite well.  More on that soon!

Anyway, Paul let me know that fellow TCDBer C2Cigars would be in town and was interested in a meetup, which sounded like fun to me.  He was a cool guy and we all swapped a few cards while hanging out at the show for a while.

On a related note, Paul brought a box of stuff for me, and out of that big pile I ended up with a nice chunk of new cards for my PCs.  (I'm trying something a bit different tonight by only scanning the new stuff instead of everything, and we'll see what I do in the future.)

We'll start with a few 2019 Topps Tigers.  Greene (the only Update example here) was traded to the Braves, of course, and utility guy Rodriguez went to Milwaukee on waivers, but the other two seem to be ticketed for a good amount of playing time in 2020.  I think I've mentioned this once or twice before but I got to see Lugo play with Single-A Lansing a few years ago when he was in Toronto's system; He then got flipped to Arizona before heading to Detroit in the J.D. Martinez deal.

Pretty much everything else was baseball PC stuff.  Before I show off the spoils I wanted to demonstrate the composition of this box.  The pile on the left is all Jim Abbott cards while the one on the right is everything else!  I did a count and came up with 80 total Abbotts, 48 of which were unique, and I needed five of those, which means Jeff's getting a bunch of new cards of one of his favorites!

One of the words of the day is definitely "oddballs," and that's a good word when it comes to sending cards to me because there's always a high likelihood that I don't have one you're sending me.  Four of Abbott's cards here fall into that category, including some unlicensed issues and a '92 U.S. Playing Cards four of spades.  Even the more mainstream card is a bit odd--a '92 Studio Preview.  I happen to think preview cards are lots of fun to collect too, and my collection of those is also fairly small.  By the way, there were some really nice Abbotts in the dupes pile, so I want to make sure to give Paul credit for those as well.

The letter "G" is a big one today as well.  One Grandy isn't "too many" but it's a great place to start, and this Orange Refractor from 2012 now has a happy home with me.  Griffey cards from '96 Summit (co-starring Johnny "Noodle Arm" Damon) and 2019 Topps Perennial All-Stars are also very welcome, especially since they push his collection over the 900 mark to 901, allowing him to join Ripken in that very exclusive club in my collection!  A nice little run of Gwynn--the player who got the most new cards this time--follows, and that begins with an odd-ish boxed set Fleer card from '86.

Again, I give lots of credit to Paul for sending some super nice Gwynn cards that I obviously liked since I'd picked up a number of them myself.  This run of five (with more below) starts with another unlicensed item, then jumps ahead to the next couple of decades.  The UD Heroes card actually came out of Prospect Premieres in 2002, which might explain why it looks so different compared to that name's usual design.  And I love the throwback to Donruss's Heritage Collection on Panini's beautiful Diamond Kings card from 2017.

Supercollection guy Rich Hill would appear here but both his items were dupes; That's still worth mentioning since Paul smartly tossed them my way in hopes of feeding my favorite PC.  I can generally find good homes for those anyway.  Instead, how about a super cool Pacific Barry Larkin card, 2000's Invincible, which, as a reminder, is a base card!  Man do I miss Pacific.  Paul certainly didn't miss when he managed to hit my Clayton Richard wantlist twice:  2018 Topps Big League's Blue parallel and 2019 Topps Update.  Clayton's made a decent number of Topps appearances in the last few years for a lower tier pitcher so there's still plenty I need.

I'll include the last card from that scan in this group, which includes four of the packages five many Verlanders!  The Chrome 2019 Topps 150 card above has a Refractor finish while the one that follows it is an X-Fractor from the base product.  Topps Fire isn't really high on my list but of the Gold Mint and Orange (#108/299) parallels above, the latter looks pretty sharp and I do like that it's numbered.

The horizontal cards formed a nice group of eight, and it starts with more winning with Gwynn.  '94 Select and '96 Collector's Choice (with Edgar!) take me back to the early years of my teens when I was collecting a bit, but the UD3 and Ionix cards from a bit later really hit home with memories of some of my prime collecting years before I took a bit of a break in college.

And again, props to Paul for hitting a couple of my slightly more obscure PCs.  Two-sport star Henson gets his 59th card, and and awesome one too, from back when Refractors really meant something and didn't have like 80 versions.  His 2003 Topps Chrome Gold Refractor has that big fat serial numbering (#062/449) that brings back fond memories of collecting in the first half of that decade.  And he also surprised me with a 2002 card of Putz I needed from that year's Piece of History product (#793/950), my 199th checklisted card out of 217 overall.  Well done!

Closing things out here, Cal makes one appearance as a co-star on a 2019 Topps Historic Through-Lines insert with Astros star Carlos Correa.  Baseball-Reference finds that the latter's age 22 season, 2017, was Ripken-esque, plus there's the card's point that both were AL rookies of the year.  And then there's one last Verlander, another appearance from 2019 Topps Update.  Not only can I credit Paul for the 900th Griffey I'm posting, but he's also responsible for JV #400!  As with Junior he's now one card over that mark.  Quite the exciting trade package, no?

Well we're not quite done yet.  "Bipped with Sabos" is your new favorite band name that you're gonna steal, and in my case I laughed at seeing these 90s Topps second-years of Spuds because of a purchase I made that that day's show.  Anyone need this card in quantities ranging from 1-12?

The final baseball item is a graded copy of Alan Trammell's '84 Topps Rub Downs oddball issue.  I already had a regular copy but Paul pointed out that this one got an '84 grade, so it'll be fun keeping it this way.  Until I crack it, trim it, and resubmit it under the name "Vary Gee, sports card influencer" and it comes back as a 110.  By the way, SGC bills itself as "THE MOST TRUSTED GRADING & AUTHENTICATION SERVICE IN THE INDUSTRY," which is like Curt Schilling calling himself the most trusted athlete in a room with Aaron Hernandez, Ray Rice, and Pete Rose.  Good luck with that.  Anyway, cool item!

And at last, the final item in the box was this Jordan Poole 2019-20 Prizm Draft Prizm parallel, my first of a guy who 1) hit this amazing buzzer-beater in 2018 to send Michigan to the Sweet 16 on the way to an appearance in the title game,

and 2) is not Jordan Peele, the hilarious actor and brilliant writer/director of Get Out.  I'm very happy to begin his collection with a college card.

Paul, thanks again for all of this and so much more!  I'm looking forward to more trades and hopefully a couple games and shows before you head to the northeast.

With my 2019 trade packages wrapped up I'm planning on covering the aforementioned late December show next, then I'll decide if I want to finish up 2019 with my COMC loot before moving on to my first show of 2020, trade package (a box!) #1 from this year, and my first buy on eBay.  Stay tuned!

2019 trade package #21: Scribbled Ink

A couple Saturdays ago I got to do another fun in-person trade with fellow Michigander Paul of Scribbled Ink while we attended that day's Tigers/Red Sox game.  He had an extra ticket available and I jumped at the chance to get to a game for free since I hadn't been yet this year, mostly owing to the team's awful roster and performance.

Despite some extremely persistent rain that caused a four-hour delay I had lots of fun even taking into account starter Jordan Zimmermann's trademark ineffectiveness.  Mookie Betts and birthday boy Andrew Benintendi put on a show for the visitors while the Tigers rallied to make it interesting.  Meanwhile, Paul was somehow able to sell both of our giveaway items--Miguel Cabrera bobblehead picture frames--and I used a gift card to buy both of us a 10-card set commemorating the '84 champs.  More on that in a future post.

Anyway, I'm always glad to trade with Paul, especially in-person so we save the shipping cost and risk of USPS destruction.  Also, he's always good for stuff I know I'll need since he's a TCDB wizard.  Here's what he brought me this time:

First up is a 2005 Bazooka 4-in-1 sticker starring PC guy Ken Griffey Jr. and a supporting cast of Bartolo Colon, Manny Ramirez, and Dontrelle Willis.  Who would have thought that 14 years later Colon would still be active?!  Also, I wonder if any of my readers are young enough that they don't remember how much of a sensation Willis was with the Marlins?

Junior's fellow HOF "G"-man Tony Gwynn is next, in the form of a sweet, uh, Sweet Spot base from '03, plus a rare baseball entry from Press Pass Fusion (2009).  The latter is a college-themed product that includes baseball, basketball, and football, plus less sporty things like poker and racing.

Paul may not be a college collector like I am but he definitely knows which one I collect, and that explains the next four cards of former Michigan diamond stars Drew Henson, Rich Hill, and Barry Larkin.  Henson obviously flamed out, but I'm glad that "Dick Mountain" is still going--at least somewhat, since he's still on the IL.  He's the other two-card guy today with Topps flagship base issues from 2017 and '19, giving me 298 unique Hill items.  Almost milestone time again!  Larkin, meanwhile, pops up on one of his Donruss Originals appearances from 2002, a fun reminder of a set I really enjoy.

One good Junior is worth another so why not have Cal tag along?  The throwback SS looks right at home on the vintage-y 2014 GQ N174 insert, which I'm assuming is a reference to one of the many old-old-old school sets cataloged by Jefferson Burdick.

And finally, Paul covered his bases (pun not intended) with a new Verlander insert for me.  I initially mistook this 2018 Topps Chrome parallel for an X-Fractor because that's where my aging collector's mind goes when it sees this pattern, but eventually I believe I correctly pinned it down as a Prism Refractor.  Refractors are awesome, JV is awesome, this card is awesome, end of story.

That marks the end of the card items but Paul had another surprise in store:

A super glossy paperback book made around the time Ripken broke Gehrig's Iron Man streak.  He said he found this at a garage sale, and hearing that makes me think I should make more of an effort to check them out once in a while.  There's a ton to enjoy here and I'll likely get down to reading it soon, but for now here's a look inside:

You can see the top cover is embossed or raised while the inside cover is glossy like the rest of the book.

There are sections on different topics by a number of authors, discussing his offense and defense, comparing him to Gehrig, highlighting his family, etc.  I grabbed a shot of this two-page spread because of the sweet six-panel action photo at the bottom.

Besides the articles there's a number of one- and two-page photos like this one of Cal waiting on-deck at Camden yards.  This is very much a visually appealing book!

Lastly I'm including a look at the book's final section (other than an appendix with an interview), a career timeline.  I like how each page covers a year while the timeline below goes into specific events and includes examples of his baseball cards and magazines, among others.

While paging through the book I also came across this fold-out poster advertising cards from the 2006 season.  Paul mentioned he had a bunch of these from a previous retail job and was thoughtful enough to include it.  Each team is represented (Pudge for the Tigers, in this case), with a card from Fleer, Upper Deck, or Topps.  Cool!

Paul, thanks again especially for inviting me to the game, and for all of this great stuff.  I know you don't have much time for blogging anymore thanks to TDCBing, but I'm looking forward to your next summary post!

2019 trade package #15: Scribbled Ink

I've probably said this a few times, but I love living close enough to a few bloggers that we can meet up for fun stuff like the occasional card show.  That's what happened in early May (as I previously posted) when the stars aligned and I was able to catch John (John's Big League Baseball Blog) and Paul (Scribbled Ink) at my monthly spot in Taylor:

While we were there Paul and I did a bit of in-person trading, saving us both some postage (negated by the gas driving there) and wear and tear by the USPS (priceless).  Paul has long since had his act together and posted lots of trade bait on TCDB so I had an easy time IDing stuff of my PC guys I really wanted, and he was generous to bring all of that and more.  Check it out!

In this first group I picked out the cards of 80s Tiger favorites Evans and Nokes, plus awesome swing guy Mickey Tettleton.  Paul tossed in a Stewart RC from a huge Diamond Kings group break, plus PC guy Scott Kamieniecki.

Currrrrrtissss!  The Grandy-man can when Paul has this many new ones for me available--mostly somewhat recent Topps issues.  My favorite is the flagship Blue Jays base as it's the only one of him not with the hated Yankees and dumpster fire Mets.  Also, I have zero idea why Topps paired him with Maris on the Timeless Talents insert.  Anyway there's some nice action shots here and I do love adding to my former blog namesake's collection.

Though not as much as scoring new stuff of Mr. Junior Griffey.  A bunch of these products were made during Kenny's prime and therefore feature terrific shots of him at the plate where he owned one of the game's top five swings.  For my money it doesn't get better than that '99 Pacific base:  a great design plus a pose that shows he knows that one's outta here.  The Rookies & Stars card brings an excellent hitting photo to the table as well.

This group includes two more of the Tribute to the Kid insert found in 2016 Topps, giving me six.  And yeah, those having some hot batting action too!  The Omega card below them from 1998 is another fun example of Pacific being zany and fun.  And perhaps the most interesting card here is the die-cut Diamond Marshals insert from Panini's 2015 Prizm--the only card in this bunch I didn't pick out.  I guess Paul had a feeling I'd like it, which was really going out on a limb but worked out.

Mr. Padre was well represented--I mean, I did pick these out, right?  There's great variety, starting with an 80s Fleer boxed set offering and oddballs from Starline Long John Silver and "Legends Sports Memorabilia" (which is totally unlicensed but not bad).  '97 Zenith looks like it belongs in a photo album, if not hung on your wall.  Upper Deck's Collector's Choice-like MVP had a Silver Signature-like parallel called Silver Script, offering a nice look at Gwynn's signature.  I can't explain why I like the City Hall insert in Panini's 2013 Hometown Heroes, but I do.  And finally, the mini you see is the Red Back version of one of Tony's two cards in Upper Deck's Goudy product from 2008.  Great additions of an all-time great.

There was a bit less to be had when it came to Maddux, but it's a good day anytime I can post new additions to his PC.  Pinnacle's '98 Plus product wasn't totally necessary and is foil-y enough to be difficult to scan, but still features otherwise solid Pinnacle design.  A 2002 Opening Day card brings me back to the end of the era when I was good with Topps' designs.  UD's Documentary is a supremely goofy set so why not add a card of Mad Dog with the Pads?  Greg's Goodwin Champions card from 2012 is pretty good compared to some of the nightmare-inducing artwork the product has put out.  Finally, Greg's horizontal '99 Ultra base is a trip back to when choice was king and base cards didn't suck!

The last player up today is old Cal Ripken Jr.  For his group I went all the way back to '87 Fleer, which is a good reminder that I have a decent number of holes in my PCs when it comes to 80s stuff, even around the junk wax era.  Score appears twice in the form of base from '94 and '97, with the latter a textbook example of the clean look they offered.  1997 Upper Deck Memorable Moments is a wavy die-cut insert and a cool way to honor the Streak.  A Gems of the Diamond chase card from Pacific Prisms ('97) comes with a super cool double-play shot.  And there's another example of Pinnacle Plus, which I always confuse with New Pinnacle, which makes me think of New Coke.

The rest of the Ripken group is quite nice as well, including another Invincible insert, a pair of Finest base (2000 and '01), '04 SPx, and a 2016 Topps Archives insert called 65th Anniversary.  That image is pretty much iconic in the collecting world at this point even though it didn't appear on Cal's RC.  To those I added a '96 Collector's Choice Silver Signature, with the Orioles logo substituting for Ripken's since it's a team checklist, and a numbered Gold parallel from Panini's 2017 Chronicles (which naturally discusses the Streak).

Thanks to this large Ripken haul he's become the first of my PCs to hit the 900-card mark (on the nose)!  That's a fun milestone, and I look forward to seeing if he or Griffey will get to 1000 first.

So that's a ton of goodies but it's still not everything Paul brought me because there was this as well:

A Verlander 8x10 for my autographed memorabilia collection?  Yes, please!  Paul had personal reasons to part with this signed photo and I was more than happy to accept it, thanking him for his generosity, in words at the show and with cards thanks to a future trade package whenever we can meet up again.  This was the cherry on top of another great show and a fun couple hours hanging out with a pair of the best card bloggers Michigan has to offer.  Thanks again, Paul and John!