Over the past couple of weeks, I have acquired a good amount of cards from various sources. Most of them packed a good punch as well. Let's check them out.
First up is a blaster of 2026 Bowman that I got from my local Target. Max Clark represents my Tigers in a Bowman Sterling insert. The rookies were represented well with a Trey Yesavage Under the Radar insert, and Roman Anthony and Sal Stewart base cards. I hit a few parallels with a Speckle Refractor of Braden Montgomery, a blue pattern of Blaine Bullard, and a Reptillian Refractor of Konnor Griffin, which may have been the best card of the blaster.
I'm going to skip ahead to a fat pack of '26 Donruss that I got during my trip to Premiere Sportscards in Orange City. The owner usually charges a little more for packs, and it was 15 bucks, but I was feeling lucky.
It was nice to see guys like Leo Durocher in the set. He is one of those guys who was famous, but doesn't appear in many card sets. Browsing the checklist on TCDB, I also saw Brewers manager Pat Murphy got a card. It's nice to see managers getting some love in sets in 2026. The base cards weren't too thrilling (Yadier Molina, yuck!!!), but the Optic parallels were nice with a Nolan Ryan and an Andrew Painter rookie. I pulled a Bobby Witt, Jr. parallel (Laser, maybe?), a Coming Attractions insert of Hagen Smith, and a Signature Series Red parallel of Carter Johnson. A Marlins prospect isn't too exciting, but I'm happy with it.
Between the '26 Bowman blaster and the Premiere Sportscards trip, I took a trip to Pop's Sportscards in DeLand with Kyler. We mainly searched through the .25 cent bin and came out with some Rays and Tigers, and I thought I snapped a picture, but I guess not.
Back to the Premiere Sportscards haul, I mainly searched though his boxes on the top of the display case. He never has prices on them, so sometimes it's scary when you get the final price, but I think I did a good job. I had about 150 cards, and he gave them to me for .25 cents each, and along with the '26 Donruss pack, I came out of there at about 55 bucks.
I found 2 '74 Topps needs, one being a Hall of Famer. There were some cool cards of favorite players. Ky Bush is one of my newest favorite players, and I found a Holo parallel of his 2025 Topps card. Richard "Dick" Fitts is also a new favorite player, and I picked up 2025 Heritage SPs of him and Logan Gilbert. Ceddanne Rafaela is also a new favorite player, and I found 3 cards of him, a 2024 Bowman Mojo Refractor, a 2024 Topps '89 redux card, and a '24 Topps Chrome Stars of MLB card. After meeting Luke Weaver last winter, I have been picking up more of his cards, including this 2020 Donruss Holo Blue parallel.
Up next are the Tigers. There was a nice chunk of 2021 Bowman Draft cards in the boxes, and not your usual stack of the same 20 cards and no stars, but stacks that weren't picked through,. I found rookies of not only Dillon Dingler, but also Colt Keith, and Spencer Torkelson. I am kind of a wierd Tigers fan. I like Alan Trammell. I have met him a number of times, and got his autograph about 10 times, but I never thought he was good enough to be a Hall of Famer. I have many of his cards, including his rookie, and some cool parallel cards, but I don't really go seeking out his cards, even though I probably should. Every now and then, I find a cool looking card of Trammell, and I'll pick it up. That was the case with the 2020 Donruss Holo Blue parallel. 2 of the coolest cards of the Tigers bunch were 2025 Bowman Mojo Refractors of Jackson Jobe and Kevin McGonigle. I'm hoping McGonigle is a franchise player for Detroit and this pickup could be my card of the year for 2026.
The Rays portion of the trip started off with the same 2020 Bowman Draft lot. I recognize many of those cards, but surprisingly, I have parallels and Chrome versions of those cards, and without looking at TCDB, I picked up all needs and didn't have any doubles. No real big names, but they were guys I needed for my team set. I picked up 2 McClanahan rookies in 2021 Donruss Optic and 2020 Topps Heritage. I'm pretty stoked about the parallel of Randy Arozarena's '89 Topps All-Star redux insert. We close out this photo with a few 2024 Topps parallels.
The rookies were probably where I did the most damage on the trip. As much as I can't stand Derek Jeter, I know a 1995 card of him is probably a good pickup, even if it is a minor league card, so I picked up both of these 1995 Upper Deck Minor League cards. The 2020 Bowman Draft set pile still had some great cards that were begging to go in my collection. I just picked anyone who has got off to a nice start in their career, including Pete Crow-Armstrong, Emerson Hancock, Jared Jones, Tyler Soderstrom, Spencer Strider, and Jordan Walker. I always hear about how Ronald Acuna Jr's brother Luisangel is going to be better than him, so I figured an early Bowman Chrome card was a good pickup. 2024 Bowman had George Lombard, Jr. and Kyle Teek rookies. I think Nick Kurtz is going to be pretty good, so any time I see a card of him, I will try to pick it up. I found his 2025 Bowman, 2025 Bowman Chrome, and 2 2025 Bowman Chrome Mojo Refractors. Counting the one I pulled from a pack last year, that is the 3rd one I have! I have also pulled 2 Black parallels of Nick from 2025 Topps Archives. The Thomas Saggese is a Red RC Logo version. Another Kurtz rookie with his 2025 Topps Holiday card. The last card is a Brady House Yellow Holo parallel from 2026 Topps.
So, how did I do with the Premiere Sportscards haul? Did I still pay too much?
If so, I'll have a few chances to make up for it in about a week. On the 7th, I will be meeting up with reader Jerry at Pop's Sportscards. I have a stack of custom cards to give to him, and I'll probably hang out for a little while and dig through some of the .25 cent team boxes.
On June 13, there is a show called the DeLand Coast to Cast Card Show that will be going on from 9 to 6. I work until about 1:30, but I think I might rush home from work, change clothes, and take Kyler out to the show. I'll probably meet up with John from Johnny's Trading Spot and finally get him a nice stack of Braves that I've been piling up for him, as well as my friend Jim from DeLand.
If I don't get enough cards by then, the next day is my birthday, and I'll probaly get a box or 2 from Karen, so I'll be good on cards for at least a few weeks. By then, Series 2 is out, and I'll be on the hunt for Nick Fortes cards and parallels. Kyler has been asking me like twice a week if he is in the checklist and will have his first Rays card, so it will be nice to finally pull one for him so he can see what it looks like. Hopefully by then the Tigers will have turned it around and decide to keep Skubal on their way to their first title since 1984. As for Tampa, they may sneak into the playoffs, but with an owner willing to sign Craig Kimbrel to a Major League contract, I can guarantee you they won't trade for anyone of value during the deadline, and may even end up dumping Yandy Diaz or Drew Rasmussen. Makes me think of lthe last few years, getting rid of Eflin, Arozarena, Paredes, and others. I guess that's what I like about baseball cards. I organize them by year and going through binders, you can see who was on the team, see who (if anyone) they picked up at the end of July, and many times you can see if they made the playoffs (if they made subset cards of the playoffs) and how they did. Just a fun way to view history and remember historic seasons and player accomplishments. And that begs the question: should the cheap owners not offer MLBPA a decent contract, will there be a 2027 season? Should there not be a 2027 season, will we get any cards in 2027? I might be ok with that if it would get most of the scalpers off of the bandwagon. It would drive prices down for everyone, and most collectors would spend the 12 months of 2028 concentrating on enjoyable parts of their collections, and hopefully they could acquire some cards they really enjoy instead of spending money on 2027 packs. Maybe an interesting topic for a post in a year or so.
Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy
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