Back to a baseball post. It has been a little bit since I’ve caught up on the collection. There have been a number of cards that have come in, coming from the DeLand card show, cards John from Johnny’s Trading Spot dropped off to me while meeting up at the show, 2 packages and 2 envelopes from Greg of Night Owl Cards, and a trip to Pop’s Sportscards in DeLand.
We'll start with the cards from the DeLand card show. Unfortunately for me, the show was on a Saturday, and I had to work. It was still a great time, and had I had a few more hours, I could've done some real damage. I was immensely impressed with the people running it.
I got there around 3, after picking up Kyler from home and changing out of my work clothes. Aparently the air conditioning had gone down and many dealers had packed up and left. It was fixed when I got there.
I paid for admission, and since Kyer was under age 10, they gave him a fake $50 dollar bill that he could spend at the kids area. It had a mixture of boxes from different sports. Some were dime cards, and some were $1-$5 cards. Ky immediately found a box of dime cards, and actually looked at my Topps wantist, and found a few '79 Topps cards I needed. He got a few cards of guys he liked in Yogi Berra, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Christian Yelich, and Bryce Harper. We also came upon a stack of various Topps parallels, and got a '16 Gold Buster Posey, a '16 Vintage Andrew Miller, a '16 Gold of John Jaso, but the real steal was the '16 Pink of Stetson alumni Corey Kluber, which was numbered to 50.
The first picture kind of skips around the day, so bear with me. Towards the end of the show, we came upon a discount pack bin, and I found one that said '1998 Score All-Star Game'. Thinking it was a promo handed out at the '98 game, I got 2 packs. They turened out to just be regular '98 Score cards that contained a special insert, but I did pull a Showcase parallel of David Segui.
My birthday was the next day, and when I came home, Karen had a blaster of '26 Donruss and a blaster of '26 Topps Series 2 waiting for me. Donruss had some cool stuff with a blue parallel of Skenes, and a Gold one of some rookie for the Jays who must be doing well because his card prices are decent, but I haven't heard of him. I pulled a Josh Wilson jersey from the Donruss blaster as well. The Topps one had a pink holo parallel of Liam Hicks, and must've been a Luis Torrens hot box, as I pulled a green and rainbow parallel. Doesn't someone collect him? I would be happy to send them out.
The real highlight of the day was finding a dealer who had a lot of cheap vintage Topps cards. They were beat up, but commons were 10 cents, and stars were like 50 cents to a dollar. I met up with my autograph buddy Jim and he showed me the table, and helped me go through my list by years.
Tons of big names. Almost too many to name. I love the 4 player '72 Leaders card and the '72 (Phillies) White Sox Allen.
I focused mainly on the '72 and '73 sets, since I figured I had a number of them.
There was a good selection of everything in that table's boxes, from managers, leaders, team cards, yearly subsets, and highlight cards as you can see.
The last part of the picture are the '79 and '16 cards Kyler helped me find at the kids table.
When I ended up leaving, I walked with Jim to his car, and he had a bag full of goodies for me from his recent trip to Texas and Colorado. He got me some Rangers cups, ice cream helmets, and a full sized vintage one. The real highlight of the bag was a birthday card that said thanks for being a great friend. That was worth more than the Rangers swag in my opinion.
At some point in the show, I met up with John, and introduced him to Jim and Kyler. I gave him the box of Braves I had for him, and he handed me a nice box of Tigers and Rays.
The box was chocked full of interesting stuff that were mostly wants, and if you have ever recieved a box from John, you know that the pictures don't do it justice and that there was so much more that wasn't pictured. One of the most interesting parts of the box was a few Fleer stamps. I vaguely remember hearng about the set, but never obtained any. There were Donruss box bottoms, Fleer glossy cards, and 1st issue cards that I just never had the chance to open packs of when the sets came out.
There was never stuff, including tons of rainbow parallels, tons of Topps non-flagship stuff, and almost full teams sets from the '25 Topps Montgomery Club set.
I'm really stoked about the season Dillon Dingler is having. I have picked up a ton of his rookie cards from just busting packs, and a decent amount are parallels. Montero is having a good season for Detroit as well. If things break right, both of my teams might have a shot at the playoffs this year.
The Rays started off in the early '00's, with some much needed Fleer stuff. I was stoked with the '99 sechedule as well, as I had one already in my favorite player binder with my Rolando Arrojo stuff. There were a few Turkey Red parallels, and I have a feeling that John was going through Blake Snell at the time, as I ended up getting a bunch of his stuff.
There were some nice Bowman cards that I needed included. I think I may have all of the Rays from Bowman and Bowman Draft, including the Chrome versions. There were more '25 Topps Montgomery cards as well.
I wish I would've found that '25 Pepiot parallel earlier, as I sent him out an autograph request the other day, and he signed my '25 and '26 Topps base cards of him. It will still look nice with the rest of my '25 Topps parallels.
Thanks, John, for the awesome box of Rays and Tigers, and for entertaining Kyler for a little bit while checked off my list.
I also have to note that John put my haggling skills to the test. I believe the dealer offered me 58 for the vintage cards, and in my head, I wanted to counter offer 50, but didn't say anything. John encouraged me to counter, so I did at 50, and it was accepted. I need to work on my courage at shows and shops.
Next up are the cards from Night Owl. He had posted a giveaway of some non-flagship Topps stuff, and I must've checked Blogger just as he posted, because I had the first comment on the post to claim the cards. He graciously sent not only 2 envelopes filled with Topps cards I needed, but 2 bubble mailers full of Topps goodness.
There were some needed Rays and Tiger parallels. The '08 Ludwick I believe completed the Update set. I will probably order some more cards from Sportlots or just make some trade offers on TCDB, as Night Owl's package probably got me down to needing 30 or so cards to have a 1980-2026 Topps run. I am actually short about 20 cards of Series 2 2026 Topps. Sometime this summer, I will finish the run!!!
The first package had a lot of Topps Opening Day, Topps Fire, and Topps Bunt. I pictured the cards in stacks so you can kind of see how many cards there were. I pulled a number of favorite players like Xander Bogaerts, Kenley Jansen, Drew Stubbs, and Ormond Beach batting cage owner, Stetson alum, and Mets legend Patrick Mazeika.
Last up is a trip to Pop's SportsCards. I went by myself as Karen and Kyler were away at the Crayola Experience at Orlando and I had just got off of work.
I dug through the dime boxes, finding a few cards that I weren't sure if they were needs, but at 10 cents each, would be worth getting. I ventured to the back of the shop and found a few random complete sets, including a decent priced 1996 Bowman's Best set.
This set gave me a run of '96-'98 Bowman's Best complete sets.
There were some cards in dollar bins, and I was really looking forward to going through the vintage boxes. I noticed an Ozzie Smith rookie the last time I was there, and wasn't sure if I needed it or not, and it tured out I did, so I was hoping it was still there.
It turns out that it was, and I grabbed it up, along with these gems.
These cards were 3 for $2, and the bottom were 3 for 5. A tad overpriced, but I mainly got them for the Tom Selleck SP and the Nakken insert.
I have been having a minor medical issue the past few weeks. It started when my arm would start killing me at night and I had pain that was so bad that I just wanted to get up and walk around to try to get the blood flowing so I could try to find a comfortable position in bed and get back to sleep. While that was going on, I started getting some red patches on my hands, wrists, and face, and the index and middle fingers on my right hand were pretty much numb 24/7. It was so bad that I played piano with basically 2 fingers and bass notes one Sunday because of the pain.
I went into a new primary care doctor about a week ago, since I hadn't been in years, and they ordered blood tests, gave me some oral steriods, and some ointment. Well, the steroids have done a number on my blood sugars, making them close to 400, but they have done a good number on the pain, making me oversleep and miss my alarm for work twice already. But the pain is gone!!! I have most of the feeling back in my fingers, and the red patches aren't nearly as bad. The bloodwork shows I have certain antiboties, and I need more labwork, but the diagnosis is leaning towards dermatomyositis, an auto-immune condition. I think the symptoms can be managed with medicine, so I will be glad to get with a rheumatologist and have it under control.
Other than that, life is going pretty well. Lit some fireworks on the 4th, and had friends that weren't relatives over to our house for I believe the first time since we purchased it in 2016. I am organizing my Braves binders currently, and will have Thursday and Friday night to work on them, and I'll be off on Friday, Tuesday, and Wednesday coming up. Might see if I can sneak Kyler over to K n T Sportscards on Tuesday or Wednesday and go through those dime (or maybe Kyle jacked them up to .50 cent) boxes.
Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy
There's gold in them there hills!
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