1985 Topps missing Detroit Tigers

 It has been far too long since I've posted customs on my blog, especially since the main focus on the blog when I started was customs. It's not a bad thing, I guess it just means I've been getting alot of new cards, and I think when I started the project of putting my new cards in binders that it kind of shifted my focus for a while. 

In my last post, I mentioned how I was eventually wanting to finish the '69 and '85 Topps Detroit Tigers sets to honor the '68 and '84 championship teams. I decided to look on my '85 Topps Reference page and see how close the Tigers were to having their missing cards done. It turns out it was only 10 or so cards short, so I went ahead and finished up the missing ones. Here they are, with credit given to the ones I didn't do. 

Dwight Lowry by Paul B.

Glenn Abbott by Lynn P.

Roger Craig Coach by Richard B.

Alan Trammell World Series Highlights by Bob J.

Kirk Gibson World Series Highlights by Bob J.

Tigers Celebrate World Series Highlights by Bob J.

Jack Morris World Series Highlights by Bob J.

Marty Castillo World Series Highlights by Bob J.

I think my next project might be to work on the missing guys from the '69 set. I know I've done the coaching staff. 

I had kind of casually mentioned to John at the show that if he had any Tigers out of that mostly vintage box that I'd be happy to trade for them. After he took it home and realized that they were dupes and that I was trying to get the '69 Tigers set, he commented on the last post that they were about to be mailed out. I'm greatful for great bloggers like John who see someone mention that they need a card or cards, and hop to it and just mail them out, no questions asked. Night Owl also did the same thing, saying that he could help me out with the pre-'79 stuff I was lacking with the Tigers. It's stuff like that which makes me thankful for the great bloggers/readers out there and makes me want to pull some great stuff from packs/shows/shops that I can help out other bloggers with. 

I don't know if it's as bad as I think it is, but my brother-in-law sent me a pic today of a Target that had a sign in the card aisle that basically said that as of May 14, trading cards weren't being sold in stores until further notice. I have a feeling it's because of those a-holes that ended up getting into a fight in a parking lot with a gun being drawn over trading cards. It's a shame, and I hope it's not true, because that means the only way I'm going to see any new product is if I get lucky and get something at market value on eBay or if I get it directly from Topps' website (I can just pick 1-2 packs of Series 2, Opeining Day, Stadium Club, Big League, Chrome, & Bowman and they are still regular price with no shipping charges, right?). Might have to hit up my LCS for .50 cent cards and hope they don't over charge me and just be content with waiting a few months and finding the complete set/Update set online. I was really hoping to pull some of those Black Gold inserts out of Update. Maybe by the time Update is out the unemployment will stop, flippers will have to get real jobs, and Target will sell cards and they will all be on the shelves for everyone. Us bloggers will have to band together.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

I promise real cards next time.

-Jeremy

Packs, packages, and plants

 I’ve got a few packages in the mail over the last few days, as well as a pack of cards or two. The cards came by way of 2 Targets that my wife graciously let me hit up while we were in Georgia and on the way home. The one in Georgia was located in Alpharetta, which is a really cool little town (at least most of the parts we went by). It had 1 hanging box of '21 Heritage left, and I got it. The Target we drove past was in Daytona, and it only had packs of '21 Opening Day, so we were able to get 3 packs. I would've probably got a few more if not for the 3 per rule, but at least there is something there for the collectors to purchase.

Seems like your average Heritage/Opening Day packs. 

No Sp's in Heritage, but I did pull some (meh) rookies, and I got 2 mascots from the Opening Day. Unfortunately, for me, the Cubs mascot was the 3rd one of that card that I have, as I purchased 2 before we went to the Cubs game in hopes of getting one signed for me and Kyler. I guess one will go in my Cubs binder, one will go in the area of my shiny binder that is dedicated to mascots that I hope to pass on to Kyler when he gets a little older, and the last one I might just add a second one to the mascot section or if anyone wants it, add as part of a trade package. The Heritage Meadows is a dupe, but the Opening Day one is new. I also have the "In Action" version of deGrom in the years' Heritage, and the Casey Mize Opening Day card will go nicely in his section of my favorite player binder right next to his '21 Donruss, Topps, and Heritage cards that I pulled. 

As for the pacakges I was talking about, both came within a day of each other, one a package from Bob of The Best Bubble, and the other from Night Owl Cards. 

I had reached out to Bob about sending him some bubble blowing and car in the background cards. We had traded about 2 years back (oddly enough, both times were shortly after coming back from vacations). He sent me some nice 30+ year old cardboard featuring Tigers. The McLain is the first actual non-reprint playing days McLain card that I own, and as excited as I am to get cards from the '70's since I only have maybe 1 Tiger card from any set from 1951-1979 or so, I was really excited for all of the 1985 Topps cards. I always enjoy cards being "yearbook style", where the players are pictured with their teams that correspond to the stats on the back (aka, the year before the card was issued). Since the Tigers won the World Series in '84, I consider the 1985 Topps set to be the best set to collect to honor the 1984 championship team. It's nice to get a little closer to completing that set. If only I could get a few (dozen) more to complete the 1969 set honoring the '68 team. I think so far I just have Norm Cash, Darryl Patterson, and Mayo Smith. 

Night Owl sent me a few cards each of the Rays and Tigers, and one of noted failed Dodger prospect/favorite player Billy Ashley. I always figured Ashley would hit 40 HRs in the Majors, and to be fair, he never really did get the 200+ At-Bats in a season to adjust to the majors. The Smyly card is a rainbow. I've always admired how nice Jeff Niemann was to fans during his career, almost always signing autographs when he had a chance. I'm sure he would've signed his '08 Allen/Ginter mini had I had it around that time. I swear I am close to completing the Tigers (and Rays) from the 2015 Heritage set, but even with the new Gose card, I'm still close to 10 short. I think because of SPs and the High Numbers. 

Thanks, Bob and Greg, for the great cards. 

I think we are supposed to be getting rain the next few days, which I welcome. Late last summer, my coworker, Butch, gave me a plant that I still don't know the correct name of. It looked about the same as the big leafed plant in the picture below. Well, winter came, and it ended up drying out and dying off. I cut off the dead branches, and a few weeks ago, when we got a day or so of rain, started to notice some little shoots coming out of the area where the original plant had been. Sure enough, it looks like this today, and good news is that it has already rained a little today, so hopefully they will start flowering at some point as long as the rain keeps up this summer. I added another pineapple (at the very bottom right corner) which needs the rain pretty bad, and there have been a few gladiolus coming up as well. All of those died off last year, so between that and the on Butch got me, I have some decent plants that come back every spring. 

Out in the back, the same 3 pineapples are there, perhaps one that will bloom this year. I think on the right are some sunflowers, and the yellower of the two must be something my sister got me that I planted. I also planted some pea and bean plants that she got me, I don’t think I’ll know where they are unless some of the fruit? starts blooming. Just like in the front, the gladiolus are popping back up, and in the very middle is an orchid that Butch gave me some seeds for. I had success with one in the front, and when he told me how big they get, I decided to transplant it to the back. It didn’t survive, and I was afraid all hope was lost as I had planted most of the seeds he gave me with no luck. I planted the last seed and waited to do so before a rainy day. I didn’t get anything for almost a month, and I checked back about a week ago after we got some rain finally, and sure enough, it stuck it’s head out of the ground. I had the boxes looking nice about 2 months ago, but the weeds are starting to show up again. 

That’s about it. Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

Getting stuff accomplished

 Well, I feel pretty accomplished today. I was able to mail off all of the packages/envelopes I have been meaning to mail off for the past 2-3 weeks, and I was able to put all of my new cards into my shiny/refractor/game-used binders. That only leaves me with my Tigers, Rays, and Favorite Player binders left. It also leaves me with a question. When do I update those ones. With some of the cards I am mailing out, I know I will have stuff come back, as I have emailed back and forth with the people I am sending to. I would say that for sure, I know I will have 2 packages coming back. With the other ones, I'm not sure, but I figure that once I update the remaining 3 catergories of binders, that I'll get a package in the mail, and I'll get some cards that I need from 2003 for the Rays/Tigers binders, which are organized by year, or a card of Rolando Arrojo for my Player binder, which is alphabatized. I don't want to be ungrateful for getting packages or put the pressure on anyone I've traded with or sent stuff to. I just don't want to jump the gun too quickly with probably my 3 favorite catergories of cards. 

I figure I will wait maybe 2 weeks, and definitely until I receive the 2 packages I am expecting. There is also an idea that Johnny from Cards from the Quarry was kicking around about sending a 2000 count box around to maybe 6 bloggers at a time. The idea is to pick out the cards you like, replace them, and send them to the next person. I think I would be in on that. I could at the very least pick out some shiny cards or perhaps a few from a favorite player, and maybe if I'm lucky, pull some nice Tigers or Rays. Then on the flip side, I can get rid of tons of Yankee$ cards, and guys I really don't like, such as Manny Machado, Yadier Molina, Hunter Pence, Gerit Cole, anyone who's ever flipped a bat, etc. If the ball gets rolling on Johnny's idea, I think I'll probably wait until I go through the box before I organize anything. The way my binders are organized now, I don't think it will stop me from getting packs, as most binders are organized by year, and it's not too difficult to put 2021 cards in. I do put team logo sticker cards in at the very end, and one of these days, I'm going to take them out and affix them to the front of my team binders. I actually need to purchase a few binders. Next time I make a big Wal-Mart run, which could probably be in a week. 

As far as the stuff sent out, if your zip code is 13601, 40475, 43606, 48105, 60703, or 97202, you will either be getting a package or pwe with some fun stuff in it. Again, I apologize for getting your hopes up that it was going to get sent out earlier, and don't feel like you have to send stuff back so I can get my binders in order. I will probably just wait a few weeks and start with my Tigers. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

5-1 Jacksonville card show

 Yesterday I was able to go to my first card show in probably 2 years. After getting the vaccine 2 months ago, it felt safe to go out to a show and see what I could find. 

I was able to meet up with John from Johnny's Trading Spot, and I had a box of Braves/PC guys for him, and he had 2 big boxes of Rays and Tigers for me. It was probably a good 250-300 cards that he had for me, and combined with the ones I found at the show, I probably had close to 500 new cards to add to my Rays/Tigers/PC binders. 

I basically dumped all the cards together and took pictures, not really bothering to separate ones from different sellers or show ones from John's ones. There were just so many cards. 

I did a good job adding some Rays cards to fill in some older sets. 

John helped me put the 2021 Donruss set to rest as far as the Rays were concerned. He also introduced me to Fred, the dealer who hooks him up with great deals. I had a good stack of cards from Fred's table, probably 60 or so cards from a dollar bin, and he charged me 40 bucks for it, but when I found John (who was at another table), he figured he could've got a better deal than that. Not to worry, though. I thought I had a good deal, and I know to have John with me next time. John got some stuff from Fred's table, including the '20 Archives Arozarena rookie, 21 Donruss, 21 Donruss Blue, and '21 Opening Day Arozarena's, and hooking me up with them. The Archives, Donruss base, and Opening Day cards were all ones I had hoped to find at the show, and the others I had hoped to find ('05 Topps Verlander and '18 Bowman Casey Mize) weren't there. There were a number of nice Rays cards I found, including a Shane McClanahan autograph, and a '21 Topps Gold Adames card. 

There were a ton of OPC Tigers that John hooked me up with. I believe the '67 Horton and '69 Patterson were from Fred's table. 

More cards from John, lots of Bowmans I needed. 

Did I mention the John gave me a ton of cards?

The '02 Bowman Grandersons were show cards. I remember when that card was super hot. 

I was happy to find the Tony Giarratano autographed card. He hit for average in the minors, and I hoped he would stay in the Majors longer. 

Newer Tigers, all from John, save the Blue Garcia Bowman rookie. 

Stuff from when I didn't collect very much. 

I think my favorites from these are all of the Chromed up cards. I looked at some of these, and they were just dripping with Chrome (I believe Dime Box Nick came up with this term). My absolute favorite was the Christin Stewart relic/auto. It was listed for 17, and I tried to get the guy down to 10, as it was my last 10 left, and he was solid on 12 bucks, but John gave me the 2 bucks I needed to get the last card of the show for me. 

Favorite Player guys. The Stadium Club Chrome X-Fractor was from John. He had it in one of his previous posts, and I was super jealous of the card when I saw it. Just a spectacular looking card. I found a Dee Gordon autographed card at Fred's table for only a buck. Many of the Andruw and Chipper Jones cards were from a table of a guy in the 2nd room of the show. The guys running the show basically split it up into 2 rooms. The first room was the main one, and it had the the 'true' dealers. The second one, you could tell had 95% flippers. Tons of blasters, graded crap, no quarter boxes, and you could just sense that the guys there were trying to make a buck from the sick mojo hitz. One table had a box that looked worth digging through, and that's where I found the Jones cards. The guy at the table next to him was a freaking freshman in high school selling NBA stuff. I hope our hobby can survive the crap that came from the pandemic. On the bright side, the one flipper table had some cool '90s inserts like a Pinnacle Epix card, a Myster Finest card, and a Pinnacle Spellbound card. 

The flipper also had a '98 Topps Minted in Cooperstown Jayson Werth rookie. I got the card for the other guy on it, Dan Reichert, a Type 1 diabetic. I found a ton of Casey Mize cards. The Profar card is either a base or a SP. I have another version of the card in my binders. I believe the Weaver autograph and the Tebow rookie were another purchase from Fred's table. I believe the Weaver was 15, the Tebow was 5, and I had one other card with it, and he let me have it for 10. 

Just look at all of those cards dripping Chrome! 

I cannot wait to put these cards in my binders. The problem is that I need to get a few new binders and probably at least a 100 ct box of pages. I had a few more card I got that I didn't take pictures of, some autographed rookie cards that I'm going to have to re-adjust my RC binder for, a Carlos Beltran jersey card, and a '98 Pinnacle Epix Maddux, among others. Also not shown are 1 or 2 cards for other bloggers that I found which should be in packages soon. Haven't found time to get everything in envelopes, and I only have 2 days until I'm flying to Atlanta for an award ceremony for my wife. She is nominated for an award at work, and I get to go along with her for all of it. We will be out of town from Wednesday to Friday, and I have my work schedule, I just haven't looked that far ahead. I promise I will mail stuff out soon. I'm sorry I've been bad about getting stuff out.  

Next binder on the list will be the shiny/game-used and refractors, followed by the Tigers, Rays, and Favorite Players. I will probably run out of pages by the time I'm partially done with Detroit, but I'll probably get some ordered in the next week.

Overall, it was a great card show, it was fun talking with John and having him answer some questions, tell stories, and work his magic with the dealers, and I hope to get a Saturday off again that coincides with the Jax show so I can go again.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

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

Vacation days 7-10

 When I last left off, we were finishing up day 6 of our vacation. 

Thursday, we had a free day basically, so we slept in till almost 11, had lunch at McDonalds, and stopped at Meijer for a few hours to get some things we needed. For me, it was hopefully baseball cards, chocolate sprinkles, and some long sleeved Tigers shirts (we usually keep the house at 70, so I need all of the long sleeved shirts I can find). We found the baseball cards I had mentioned in the 2 previous posts, didn't find any Tigers long-sleeved shirts at the price I wanted to pay, but we did find the chocolate sprinkles.

Let me tell you about chocolate sprinkles. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan until I was 8. Both sets of my grandparents came to the US from the Netherlands. Near Grand Rapids is a town called Holland, Michigan, and there are vibrant Dutch communities in Michigan. Because of that, many different Dutch foods are available widely in Michigan, including chocolate sprinkles. What many of my relatives in Michigan do with the sprinkles is butter a piece of bread, and then spread the sprinkles on it and eat it. With my sweet tooth, I naturally loved these. I suppose I could just get some regular chocolate sprinkles from a store here in Florida, but I'm pretty sure they won't be the same. Needless to say, the past 5 days for lunch at work I have been eating chocolate sprinkle sandwiches and getting some pretty strange looks from coworkers. After Meijer, we came back to Uncle Jeff's, and took a nap. 

Jeff made us fried ham for dinner, which is something I never had before, but might try again. We had baked potatoes, and they went well together. After dinner, we had some time to shoot the breeze, and I had a Angry Orchard Strawberry Ale, and we talked some about labor unions. One of my goals in life is to be a part of one. I've never had a job were I've felt that the employees had a fair chance with anything against management. They have just been too powerful and either had money, other managers/corporate, or both backing them. I just think it would be nice to have a different perspective and see what changes could be made with the power of a union behind the employees at a place I would work. 

Friday was a day I was looking forward to. We were able to snag tickets to a Cubs-Braves game at Wrigley Field. It would be the 10th different MLB stadium I have attended a game at. The others are Tropicana Field, Turner Field, Fenway Park, Shea Stadium, Miller Park, Comiskey Park 2, Kauffman Stadium, Minute Maid Park, and Comerica Park. If you take away the 2 that got replaced, that's still 8 current ones. Kyler was at 4 after seeing Wrigley (he's been to Tropicana, Minute Maid, and Comerica). Not too shabby for a 4 year old. 

Originally, we were trying to get tickets for the Saturday game, and I was going to meet up with Dime Box Nick, but we were unable to, so we ended up going to the Friday game, and didn't get to do a blogger meetup. It was ok, because I didn't even realize that Friday was Jackie Robinson Day. 

We took the tram to the ballpark

My first view of the Wrigley Field diamond.

Kris Bryant

Ronald Acuna, Jr.

Centerfield scoreboard

One of the coolest thing was seeing everyone wear #42. Glad I got to go to this game. 

While I took Kyler to the bathroom, Karen got us some pizza. It was some really good pizza, from a place called Home Run Inn Pizza. I got a sausage pepperoni and cheese pizza, and I'm glad I didn't find out what we payed for it. We were freezing. Our seats were 2 rows from the top of the stadium along the LF/3B foul line, and it was in the low 40's with shade and windy. We only stayed for a time or 2 around the batting order and headed back to Jeff's. 

Me and Kyler in front of the scoreboard. There is one of the 3 of us, but it is on Karen's phone. 

For dinner, we stopped by Sonic, and I just got a hot dog. Sonic is another place that doesn't really have anything to me that is standout good. 

Saturday was our last full day. We met up with Karen's old college roommate Natalie, and we went out for lunch. Uncle Jeff lives in Rockford, Michigan, and let me tell you what, downtown Rockford is amazing. DeLand, FL (where I live) was voted America's #1 downtown a few years ago, but Rockford is really nice. There was a downtown area with lots of restaurants, a nice park with a huge dam system, and just tons of people out and about doing stuff like shopping, walking dogs, or taking the kids out. The park had firepits, a putting green, and tons of benches and picnic tables. Just a great place. We ended up eating at a place called Ramona's Table. I got a Cuban Sandiwch that had pulled pork on it. I think the pulled pork took away from the saltiness of the ham. 

The dam was beautiful. There were people fishing from it, and Kyler enjoyed throwing leaves into it. 

To add some cards to the post, here are some cards that Johnny from Cards from the Quarry, which were waiting for me when I got back from the trip. These are from his Sunday Trade Bait posts. Just some Rays and Tigers for those binders, a Schoop for my favorite player binder, and a card for my Dutch National Team collection. I’m not quite sure what to do with some of the guys I’ve picked up from some of the WBC sets. A number of guys like Schoop, Andrelton Simmons, and Kenley Jansen have all gone on to have successful MLB careers, but a number of the guys on the team didn’t, and I just am not sure if I want to add their names to my Favorite Player page since they just have 1-2 cards (with like 10 parallels), and not many people will even know who they are. I guess I will when I update my favorite player binder in the next month or so. Now, if I could only find a fitting place in the binder to put my card of the Netherlands flag...

Tomorrow I’m going to tackle mowing our lawn, but it might not take nearly as long since I weed eated today. After that the fun stuff will happen. I’ve really been wanting to visit my LCS and thumb through their 50 cent box and see what I could find, perhaps even buy a pack or two if they aren’t through the roof. I also need to stop by my friend Jim’s house and drop some cards off to him.  We’ve been to a few cars shows together, and he is a fellow autograph collector, and we’ve helped each other out a few times. It turns out that he had some knee surgery recently, and while on the way back from the trip, he let me know that the guy doing the rehab on it actually played minor league ball. Turns out, I have a card of him, so I’m going to hopefully drop it off either today or tomorrow and he’s going to try to get it signed. I also want to try to go to the post office and mail off some cards. If any of the cards on the last post I did look good, let me know, and I can have a pwe out by tomorrow.  

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

Vacation days 4-6

 Today I pick up where I left off  with the vacation stuff. 

Monday morning, we were up bright and early to eat breakfast with Karen's Uncle Toren (Tiffany's dad), his wife, and Tiffany and Matt at Cracker Barrel. They have never been my favorite, but I figured we could get going to one out of the way without having to waste a dinner at one (Karen loves them for some reason). I had biscuits and gravy with bacon, and it wasn't too bad. After breakfast, we took off for Ohio, driving through Virginia and West Virginia. One thing I never realized is that both states have tons of mountains. While driving, we experienced the strangest thing (at least to someone used to flat ground in Florida). There were these dark patches in the mountains that looked like black trees, but the only weird thing was that they moved. Eventually, I think we came to figure out that it was just shadows from the clouds, but it was the strangest thing. I got a picture of one while driving by. 

Kyler was more interested in playing with his eyes (or maybe flipping us off). 

He was, however, impressed with a few of the tunnels we had to drive through.

Another thing we saw that made me want to take a picture were some of the overpasses. I lived in Michigan until I was like 8, and I always remembered the overpasses (especially train ones) being made of steel-like pieces like the one in the photo below. Every time I see one, it reminds me of Michigan. 

We had McDonalds for lunch on the road. I got my usual 10 piece nugget meal with a diet coke. I prefer Pepsi to coke, but it seems like down south, most places only offer coke. Lucky for me, the vast majority of places we went to in Michigan and northern states had Pepsi.

We got to the hotel in Columbus around dinner time, and we ordered LaRosa's pizza for dinner. We made a mistake and ate on the bed, and it took like 2 days to get the crumbs off. The pizza was ok, but nothing special. I am a big pizza guy, and I usually get a thin crust pizza with all the meats and no veggies, and prefer a small helping of sauce. I think if Papa Johns would do their sauce a little less like Dominos that they would have the prefect pizza. I think the LaRosa's one had a little too much sauce, and that's what I didn't care for.

We got up on Tuesday about an hour before our time slot for the Columbus zoo and it was only like 30 minutes from the hotel, so we made it in plenty of time. There is the main sign for the zoo.

I only got one picture of the water tower that they sometimes picture on the Secrets of the Zoo show. I figured I would have more chances to take pictures, but I just never saw it from where we were. It is right above that red car.

I promise we saw more animals, but I really only took pictures of the Sand Cats, and Karen got most of the other animals on her phone. I believe we saw polar bears, elephants, zebras, gorillas, penguins, and other less common animals. I really wanted to see the Pallas Cats, but they weren't out. The Sand Cats kind of were. There was a Jack Hanna building where they kind of told how the zoo recycled things, and there were a bunch of habitats build with toy food in them. 

They look just like house cats, but they have fangs and are mean. 

We had lunch at the zoo. I got pizza. Wasn't too bad or expensive. For dinner, we went to a place called Capital City Fine Diner in Dublin, Ohio where our hotel was. It was a cool little place, and had a great downtown area around it. I got some fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. It was pretty good. 

Wednesday, we spent most of the day driving. For lunch, we got Chic-Fil-A. I usually get a 12 count fried nugget meal with a diet coke. We arrived to Michigan around dinner time, and spent all of our time in Michigan at my Uncle Jeff's house. He is married to my Aunt Val, whom we ate dinner with while in Charletson, SC on the first day of our vacation. Jeff made us some tacos for dinner. There are some months where we have tacos almost every week. Actually, they are burritos, but we call them tacos. I always do a burrito shell with refried beans on the bottom and hamburger meat on the top, nothing else, unless occasionally when I get cheese on top. Jeff's tacos were pretty good. He had smaller burrito shells, so where I usually have 2 of the larger ones, I had 3 of Jeff's. Jeff is a cool guy who works at Amway. We would usually spend the evenings talking in his living room after Kyler went to bed. We would usually crack open an adult beverage, as well. I usually have an Angry Orchard Apple Ale, but midway through the trip, we found a Meijers, and they had Angry Orchard Strawberry Ale, so I got a 6 pack of it, and I think I liked it better than the apple one. The sweeter anything is with me, the better. 

Jeff had some chickens and 2 ducks at his house, so Kyler got to help feed them a few times and gather some eggs. 

He also had cats, which Kyler loved chasing. 

Also, not a pet, but they have black squirrels in Michigan. All of the ones in Florida are either brown or gray. 

On to the card goodness. In the last post, I mentioned that I got a fat pack and hanging box of Donruss. On top of that, I had previously gotten a hobby pack, and another hanging box that ended up getting delivered while we were on vacation. I took a picture of all of the shiny cards I got. I think the first 3 are Red White & Blue, next is a Blue and a Statue of Liberty parallel, some Orange, and starting with the Altuve, some Red ones, and a Blue Star? Andre Dawson. The Albies looks like a Vector parallel, and not sure what the technology on the next 4 are. I pulled 3 SP's from the Heritage blaster, a Matt Joyce (#421), Wilson Ramos (#417), and a Matt Alexander, who I am keeping, since he is a Tiger. I think I'm willing to part with any of these if anyone wants them. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy