Saturday, July 5, 2025

Summer Vacation (& Baseball Cards)


This week was my annual Ashland, Oregon tripFour days up there with my friend and her familyFour days of delicious food, gorgeous sunsets, good company, and excessive spending.


If you've never heard of Ashland, it's known for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that runs from March to October each year.  We've never watched any performances, but we did participate in a Shakespeare inspired "escape room" this year.

We also enjoy walking around Lithia Park in downtown area.  That's where I took this wallet card shot


Downtown Ashland also has a bunch of cool stores.  This year I spent more money than usual on Christmas and birthday presents for friends and family.  While my friend and her kids were shopping for clothes and stuff, I spent time in the record and toy shops.

But we would always meet up at the book stores and a comic book shop called More Fun.  This year I promised one of my nieces that I'd buy her a comic book.  She picked out a Godzilla vs. Avengers comic that looked really interesting.  I bought a copy for myself:

Godzilla vs. Avengers #1

I'm a huge Godzilla fan, so I also bought this issue:

Godzilla vs. Spider-Man #1 (2nd Printing)

I couldn't find any card shops in Ashland, but I did manage to purchase some cards in Medford... which is about 15 minutes away.

There's an antique shop I love to visit every summer called Main Antique Mall.  I found two vendors with sports cards, so I supported both.

The first one had this set of 7-11 discs for $8:

1983 7-11 Angels/Dodgers Coins

There are twelve discs in the set with a total of two hall of famers:


1983 was the first year 7-11 created these lenticular sports discs.  Their baseball set was a regional issue released in the Los Angeles area.  Here's a closer look at the front and back of Rod Carew's disc:

1983 7-11 Coins #1

The other vendor I purchased from had a box of 2025 Bowman singles that were priced at two for a dollar.  I grabbed these two:

2025 Bowman Chrome Mojo Refractor #12
2025 Bowman Chrome Mojo Refractor #BCP-114

There were a ton of 1st Bowmans, but I'm not big on prospecting... so I grabbed a Sasaki for my Japan PC and a Kurtz for my A's PC.

The final thing I want to show off is this awesome Thrifty's ice cream scoop:


I have been looking for one of these for quite some time.  A few weeks ago, my friend came across one of these at a store near her house.  She knew I worked there back in high school, so she bought it for me.

I'll go ahead and wrap up this post with one more baseball card:

1990 Donruss #229

Why am I showing off a Junk Wax Era card of a back-up catcher?  Well... he was born in Ashland, Oregon back in 1961:


Now that I'm back home... I'm hoping to continue to organize my collection and hammer out some blog posts featuring some recent card show pickups, flea market finds, and a few care package summaries.

Until then...

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

3 comments:

Johnnys Trading Spot said...

Mark Parent was also born on September 16th (my birthday). That first photo is awesome.

Dennis said...

That sounds like a lot of fun! I agree with Johnny about the sunset photo. I'd also love to hear more about the Shakespeare-themed escape room. That's fun that you have a niece that's also into comics. And once again, I love the 7-11 discs!

Nick Vossbrink said...

1. You're killing it with the 7-11 discs.
2. Fantastic news on the Thrifty scooper.
3. I miss Ashland. My sister worked for OSF for a few seasons and we'd drive up and visit her slash watch a few plays. Is a nice little place even if Coralline is set there.