LCS trip and a show

 The last post basically wraps up my vacation. I could bore you with 2 days of driving and fast food, but I'm sure you'd rather hear about my trip to my LCS yesterday and such. 

I have been wanting to hit up my LCS for a few weeks to get some stuff for trading partners as well as to find newer cards for my collection. I was hoping to maybe even find some 2021 Heritage singles, but the newest stuff I found in their 50 cent bins was 2021 Topps. No Heritage, no Donruss, and certainly no Bowman (which aparently is out now). The newest product they had in packs was Heritage and Opening Day. The shop owner kept trying to get me to buy blasters of them for 3 dollars over what they got them at Wal-Mart for. First off, if you own a freaking card store, shouldn't you be buying them directly from Topps? You are part of the problem of no product being on the shelves. I almost walked out when a flipper came in and they talked about how evil Target was going to start limiting customers to only 1 item per shopper. The shop owner seems a little out of touch with reality. A number of the cards in the 50 cent box were commons that belonged in a 10 cent box. Some of the cards that made it in there were stuff like a JD Drew jersey card, and various numbered cards, parallels, or rookies that should've been in a 5 dollar box or something. I was pulling Randy Arozarena rookies from the box a few months ago. A number of cards in the 3 for 10 dollar box were '90's base cards of Ken Griffey, Jr. and just stuff that should never sell for that much. I guess I would call it a draw with the prices on cards in boxes, and I'm ok with that. Their price on wax (old and new) is way too much. 2020 Opening Day packs for 8 bucks. '89 Topps packs for 4 bucks. I just wish they would stay in touch with sports and the hobby instead of trying to sell replica championship rings, skateboards, and flippable stuff mainly. I guess since it is one of the few hobby shops in the area that I'll just use the 50 cent boxes. 

They had a number of Rays and Tigers that caught my eye. I guessed as to whether I needed a few of the cards (mainly the Bowman ones), and surprisingly, I guessed correctly on all of them. I think the steals as far as the cards in the first photo are the '93 Stadium Club 1st Day Issue Milt Cuyler, the 2003 Elite Jeremy Bonderman rookie,  and the 2 Bowman mega box sparkly ones. 

They had some pencil boxes in another area of the store that had team logos on them with all cards divided by team in each box, and I dug through the Tigers and Rays boxes. After going through them, I realized that someone must've broken up a 2002 Topps complete set, so I quickly tried to remember the rookies in that set, and I figured that Joe Mauer must've had a rookie in that set. I found the Twins box, and sure enough, his card was in it. I also found a Mike Soroka rookie and a Trent Grisham Prism rookie. I didn't want to buy much 2021 Topps, figuring I'll buy the complete set in July, but I had to get the Gio Gonzalez sunset card. Back in 2006, I was living in Montgomery, Alabama, and they had a minor league team in Double-A, the Montgomery Biscuits. I went to a ton of Biscuit games from '06-'09, and in one of them, they were playing the AA club for the Chicago White Sox, the Birmingham Barons. I had a few cards of Gio, and I waited until after the game to try to get them signed. Gio came back, and I was never good with recognizing faces, so I asked him his name. He kidded me and was like 'You don't recognize me? I'm Gio'. He signed my cards, and went back inside the clubhouse doors to get something. When he came back out, I said 'Hi Gio', and he laughed. It was nice to see Gio succeed in the Majors, making an All-Star team, and winning 20 games in a season. I hoped to see him win a World Series title, but he still had a decent career, and I was sad to see him retire. 

The Nationals team card is some kind of blue parallel, and I picked up the lone HR Challenge card in the boxes to try to win one this year. The last card is the aforementioned JD Drew jersey card. 

Not pictured are a few cards I picked up for some trades. I was hoping to stop by the post office on Saturday, but the bad news is I probably won't make it. The good news is that I actually got a Saturday off from work, and there is also a card show in Jacksonville. John of Johnny's Trading Spot is planning on attending, and I'm excited to meet him. As he mentioned in a post a few months back, he could very well be the person with the most baseball cards in the world, and I can't wait to swap stories and dig through some boxes with him. My binders are slowly getting organized, and that creates a little bit of a dilema with me at the show. I don't want to get stuff that will make me have to reogranize binders, so that means mostly 2020 or newer stuff for non Rays and Tigers. I'll probably pick up cheap rookies if I can find them, but I just updated my Rookies/Sunset card binder, so if I find a '87 Fleer Greg Maddux, it's going to be a lot of reorganizing for just 1 card. Jersey cards and shiny cards should be fine, as those are my next binders, and so are anything Rays/Tigers/favorite players. I do have a few particular cards that I want to look for at the show:

1997 Topps Brooks Kieschnick (the cheapest one online is like 6 bucks)

2020 Topps Archives Randy Arozarena (the only rookie I don't have of him)

2021 Donruss Randy Arozarena

2021 Topps Opening Day Randy Arozarena

2018 Bowman Casey Mize

2005 Topps Justin Verlander

All but the 1st one should be available at the show, hopefully at decent prices. I really hope to dig through John's friend Fred's boxes. If he has 50 cent boxes with '90's and '00's inserts/parallels, I think I probably won't leave his table. 

I was planning on leaving around 7 to get there around 8:30 when it opens, but things just got complicated this morning. I was driving to work at like 4:25 in the morning, and was about 3 stoplights away from work when I saw something in the median that looked like an animal or something. I was in the left lane, and of course it was a small deer or something that was on a busy street in the freaking city near a Checkers and a brewery, and of course it decided to run out from the median and go in the direction of my car when I tried to swerve to the right. I hit it, and it banged up the front of my car, and now part of my hood is messed up and I'm afraid that part of it will fly off if I end up going on the highway. Thankfully, I was ok, but I'm not looking forward to all the insurance crap and having to pay a higher premium, especially after just having some idiot hit my car back in July and having to do the insurance stuff back then. I think the plan will be to drop my wife off to work, which is on the way to the interstate, but I just don't think she will want to leave around 7, so I might get there later than I want, but if it's just flippers at the show, I might be able to go through all of the tables that I want to.

As far as mailing out the packages, I'll try to make it happen after work in the next 7 days, just depending on when I get out. Thankfully, nothing is sealed up right now, so if I find stuff at the show to add to them I can.

That's about it for now. Hopefully in 2 days I will have a huge post with some new cards. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy