First Mall Show of the Year

Card shows used to be so alluring.  Not long ago, I was constantly on the lookout for them in my area.  However the rise in interest for graded and gaming cards has sadly lowered my interest in card shows.  I'm especially turned off by the ones that charge parking and/or admission.

Luckily there is still one local mall show about twenty minutes from my place.  Sure it's flooded with Pokemon cards and slabs, but I did manage to find a few dollar bins two Saturdays ago in between visits with friends.

Most of my purchases revolved around football cards, which isn't very interesting most of you.  So I'll go out of order and show off the lone baseball card purchase first...

Purchase #2:  Dollar Rookie Cards  $3

There was a couple with four shoeboxes filled with top loaded dollar cards.  I spent over twenty minutes standing there going through all of them, while talking to the gentleman about the hobby.

1987 Fleer #269

One of our conversations revolved around how this card was once one of the most expensive in the set.  Anyone remember back in the early 90's when Will Clark was towards the top of Beckett's Hot List?  Remember when this card booked for $35?

2019 Topps Update #US1

The vendor had a handful of cards laid out on top of the shoeboxes to attract customers.  This was one of them.  I'll pick up copies of Vladito's flagship rookie card for a buck all day long.  Unfortunately, this was the only one he in these boxes.

1995 SP #99

It's hard to believe that it took me over three decades to finally add this card to my collection.  I bought a lot of football back in the 90's, but never owned this card.  Sapp was a beast on the gridiron and a first ballot hall of famer.  This is arguably my best find of the day.

The rest of my card show purchases revolve around football cards, but I'll wrap up this post with a vintage baseball card I purchased off of eBay.

Let's continue with my card show haul...

Purchase #1:  Modern Football Rookie Cards  $10

My first purchase of the day was from a guy who had a few rows of cards he had marked at $3 each.  I pulled out five and he charged me $10.  Two of them were for fellow bloggers, but these are for me:

2025 Phoenix #200

2024 Prizm #301

I don't usually go out of my way to purchase rookie cards of quarterbacks who aren't on the Packers or Seahawks, but both of these guys impressed me this season.  Classify this as a FOMO purchase.

I don't usually take the time to go through $3 bins, but this card caught my eye:

2021 Prestige Xtra Points Blue #244 (#'d 003/249)

Micah Parsons is a stud and the Green Bay Packers were right in the thick of things this season until he tore his ACL in December.  Can't wait to see him return next season.

Purchase #3:  Super Bowl Bound QB RC  $3

Two of my friends set up at this show.  Tom specializes in the non-sports stuff, along with higher end sports cards.  While Tony focuses on the cheaper stuff.

I noticed a stack of Drake Maye cards on Tony's table.  This was my favorite:

2024 Topps Chrome #203

Maye had one heck of a season... and on Sunday he'll be facing off against my beloved Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl.  Go Hawks!

Purchase #4:  Bargain Bin  $12

I'm a sucker for bargain bins... and this guy had two boxes filled with dollar cards.  If the card was in a one-touch or top loader, it was two bucks.

Let's start with them:

I figured the magnetics were worth the two dollar price tag alone.  In hindsight I should have grabbed all of his $2 one touch singles at this price.  I also picked up two cards in top loaders:

2024 Leaf Pro Set Pure Green Spectrum #60 (#'d 1/49)

2025 Phoenix Phoenician Penmanship #PHP-MRN

I was pretty excited to add this Joe Namath to my Prime Number PC.  Plus sticker auto or not, I'll always add a Super Bowl MVP autograph to my collection for a couple bucks.

I also pulled out three dollar cards from his boxes.  One is for a fellow blogger, but here are the two for me:

2024 Prizm Silver Prizm #145

2025 Absolute Red Plaid #137

The vendor ended up tossing them into the deal for free.  That was a nice surprise.  I'll definitely look for his table the next time I attend this show.

That wraps up my latest card show haul.  Two hours of entertainment and walking out with a small stack of cardboard made the experience a successful day at the mall (even if there were two baseball cards involved).  There's another show in February, but it falls on the same day as one of my flea markets.  Not sure I'll attend both, but we'll see.

Here's the baseball card I mentioned earlier in the post:

1959 Fleer Ted Williams #67

Greg over at Crocodile Sports Cards show off this Ted Williams card on his blog two weeks ago and I immediately added it to my saved eBay searches.

I was drawn to it, because it features Sam Snead, who was one of those old school golfers that my father talked about when I was a kid.

That leads us to today's question of the day:

Are there athletes that you associate with your parents or other family members?

I'd say Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Joe Montana, Jim Plunkett, and Bart Starr are athletes that remind me of my dad.  As for my mother, Joe Montana reigns supreme.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Whirlwind of a Week

This past week has been filled with surprises of all varieties that are best broken down into the following categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:  Surprise Road Trip

Last Sunday my friend invited me to join her and her mom down in Pismo Beach for a short vacation along the Central Coast of California.  My lower back was feeling good for the first time in weeks, so I couldn't pass up this opportunity.

We spent a total of three days and two nights there and the weather was perfect for walking on the beach, doing a little shopping, eating delicious meals, and hanging out by the fire pit.

Here are a few photographs from our trip:

Tashi & Me

Wallet Card @ the Fire Pit

In a few days, it'll be eleven years since Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown inspired collectors to pick a card in their collection that they enjoy and start carrying it around in their wallets.  I don't go on too many vacations, but when I do... I'll pull it out.  

Wallet Card @ the Beach

In honor of Gavin, I made sure to take a photo of my wallet card in the wet sand.  He usually takes things a step further by allowing his card to take a dip in the water, but mine isn't quite ready to swim.

Another thing I like to do when writing about trips is research famous athletes who were raised in the area.  Unfortunately Pismo Beach's population isn't very high, so I couldn't find any notable athletes that I was familiar with from the area.

Ribeye @ Jocko's

However on Monday night, my friend took us out for a delicious ribeye steak at a restaurant in the small town of Nipomo.

2019 Topps Clear Travel #CP-53

Jeff McNeil went to high school in Nipomo and ironically, the New York Mets traded him to the Sacramento A's on the day of our dinner.

The next day we woke up, packed, ate a yummy breakfast then rushed back to the Bay Area in an effort to beat the rain, wind, and predicted flooding.  Thankfully we got home safe and sound, but this was going to be just a quick stop for me.

The Bad:  Under the Weather

My brother met me at my house and the next morning we drove to Roseville and spent Christmas with our brother's family.  We lucked out and avoided any holiday traffic, because we left at 5am.  But we did hit some rain which made it hard to see the roads at times.  Thankfully, my bro got us there in one piece.

Christmas Eve was pretty relaxing.  We watched some movies and ate a delicious miso salmon dinner.  However, I started to feel a little congested.

We all woke up early on Christmas morning, ate fried rice for breakfast, and opened presents.  At around 10am, my head was throbbing so bad from the nasal congestion that I took some Mucinex and laid down.  I kept hoping I'd feel better, but by the afternoon I had quarantined myself from the everyone.

It rained off and on throughout Christmas Day.  There's a creek that runs behind my brother's property that was slowly rising.  It peaked sometime around 9pm and ended up flooding half of the backyard, but thankfully the water had receded by the next morning.

The Ugly:  Worst Headache in Years

The day after Christmas, we came home.  I loaded up on over the counter cold meds, orange juice, and chicken noodle soup and hoped the road to recovery would begin.  It didn't.

Friday and Saturday were rough.  Every time I coughed, I'd feel a sharp pain in my head.  My main sources of relief were sleeping and taking hot showers.  Fortunately, I woke up this morning feeling a little better.  I still have a cough with phlegm, but the headache is tolerable.

I'm planning on resting one more day to help my body fight whatever it is I'm dealing with.  

Hopefully I'll finally ship out the holiday care packages I've been putting together either tomorrow or Tuesday.

In the meantime, I wanted to recap the highlights from my 2025 Topps Holiday Advent Calendar.  Several other bloggers have covered the day by day contents of their calendars, so I figured I'd just show my favorites...

2025 Topps Holiday Buyback: 1997 Topps #410

The two buybacks were the main reason I purchased one of these advent calendars.  To pull one of my all-time favorite baseball player was a dream come true.

The other card I was really hoping to pull was a Nick Kurtz rookie:

2025 Topps Holiday #H40

The Green Plaid parallels pair perfectly with any of the A's players.  I was fortunate to pull one:

2025 Topps Holiday Green Plaid #H32

It seems like The Nice List inserts were a hit with collectors.  I don't love them or hate them.  I just wish Topps made them a little tougher to pull.

2025 Topps Holiday Making The Nice List #MNL-2

Overall I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this product's design.  My buddy opened a couple of blasters and told me I could have his duplicates.  If I have a reasonable percentage of the set, I might just purchase a blaster and attempt to build it.

Well that's about all the energy I can muster right now for a blog post.  I hope all of you are enjoying your holidays.  As soon as I can ship out all of those care packages (hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday), I will write another post.

Until then...

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

A Trio of BIPs (Blogger Inspired Purchases)

A quick post with a back update and some recent blogger inspired purchases.  Let's start with the back.  I'm still in a lot of pain, but at least it's not constant.  I've had to burn a handful of sick days and a couple of half days, but it's slowly getting better.

One of the most comfortable positions is laying down flat, pillow under my neck, legs bent, feet flat on the ground, with a heating pad under my lower back.  As luck would it... I'm able to still use my laptop (which lays on my belly) to create Google Slides and lesson plans, do some online Christmas shopping, read blogs, and of course buy cards.

Most of my recent card purchases have been inspired by fellow bloggers.  Let's get to it...

BIP #1:  Beastie Boys Custom

2024 Nine Pockets 1982 Topps In Action #3

Regular readers know that the Beastie Boys are my all-time favorite group.  So when I saw that Gregory over at Nine Pockets created a new card for them, I immediately headed over to his eBay store and purchased four copies.  I asked if he'd sign one of them which he graciously did.  Here's a scan of the back:

He also offered to include a free copy of his original Beastie Boys custom:

2020 Nine Pockets 1982 Topps Future Stars #5

I already own a copy, but told him I'd love an extra for my buddy who is also a huge fan.

Thank you Gregory!  And keep up the creation of sweet customs!

BIP #2:  Iconic Hockey Set

1990-91 Upper Deck French Hockey Set

Not a lot of hockey fans out there, so I'll keep it short (not really... so if you need to... just scroll down).  This set was huge back in the 90's and I've always wanted to own a copy of the French version.  It was once considered much rarer than the English version.

1990-91 Upper Deck French #525

The set is loaded with hall of fame rookie cards including guys like Mike Modano, Ed Belfour, Mats Sundin, Pavel Bure, and Sergei Federov.  Plus it's only a matter of time before Jaromir Jagr gets inducted.

As for the blogger that inspired this purchase, that honor goes to this trio.

#1 Gregory @ Nine Pockets (Again):  He got the ball rolling with a post showing off his complete 1991-92 Upper Deck hockey set back in October.

#2 Bulldog @ Nothing If Not Random:  Bulldog wrote a post showing off three packs of 1991 Upper Deck football that reminded me how awesome early 90's Upper Deck products were.

#3 Joseph @ CrazieJoe's Card Corner:  The day after Bulldog's post, Joe showed off a 1990-91 Upper Deck Tom Barrasso hockey card in a post and the search was on.

Two weeks later, I won an auction on eBay for $21.62 (+ tax & shipping).  Two of the cards (#92 & #93) were English versions.  Unfortunately the seller didn't have either of these cards laying around, but he did refund me a few bucks to cover the cost of me tracking them down for my set.

BIP #3:  Barry Sanders Oddball Rookie

1989 Detroit Lions Police #11

Two weeks ago, Greg over at CROCODILE SPORTS CARDS showed of some recent purchases that included an oddball rookie card of one of the greatest running backs of all-time.

That same day, I purchased a copy of my own off of eBay for $11.75 (tax & shipping included).

Anyone who had the pleasure of watching this guy run in the 90's understands his greatness.  It's just a shame he played for the Detroit Lions.  Can you imagine what his career would look like if he was running behind the Dallas Cowboys' offensive line?

Speaking of the Detroit Lions, I'm quietly rooting for them to beat the Los Angeles Rams today.  Not sure if that'll happen, but if it does and the Seahawks can take down the Colts... the Hawks would own the best record in the NFC.  Let's go Lions, Hawks, and Packers!

Thank you Gregory, Bulldog, Joseph, and Greg for inspiring me to add these cards to my collection!

Happy Sunday and sayonara!