The Antique Store Road Trip

Last month, I packed my bags and drove up to Ashland, Oregon to see one of my best friends and her family.  It's become an annual vacation that involves a lot of eating, shopping, and catching up.

One day is dedicated to shopping in downtown Ashland where the girls enjoy looking for sticker books, plushies, and clothes.  This is usually pretty painful for me, but I have found a few shops on the strip that I'll hang out in to kill time.  Plus that's usually the day we grab pretzels at Skout Taphouse & Provisions:

If you're a fan of pretzels and you are in the area, I'd highly recommend this place.  It's one of our favorite places to grab lunch.

The following day we drove into Medford.  This is my favorite day, because it revolves around a bunch of antique stores that are much more appealing to me.  We went to four shops that were located within a two mile radius.  One of them had a solid variety of trading cards.

Main Antique Mall had two display cases dedicated to cards:

I've seen this card display in this store the past three to four years.  However this one was new to me:

The vendor has some cool sets for sale, including some 80's O-Pee-Chee baseball:

I was very interested in the 1982 and 1984 O-Pee-Chee sets, but $300 for the pair was too rich for my budget.  Unfortunately, I didn't make any purchases that day.

However, I did purchase some cards at Timeless Treasures Hub on the day I arrived.

The first day we were in Ashland, I arrived early and had a few hours to kill,  I knew that we would eventually go to Medford to check out the four antique stores mentioned above, but one was located a little out of the way.  I decided to check it out on my own.

The shop is owned by a couple and has everything from furniture to LP's.  Plus there were three display cases with sports cards.  I ended up talking to the husband about cards for close to thirty minutes before spending another thirty minutes walking around their store.

In the end, I walked away with these two cards:

1996 Fleer Ultra Series 2 Diamond Dust Mail-In Offer

Sometimes you find good deals.  Other times you don't.  This card is an example of the latter.  I thought it was a redemption card for one of these Cal Ripken Jr. game-used infield dirt cards:

1996 Fleer Ultra Diamond Dust #NNO

However after reading the card this morning, I realized it's actually just an advertisement card Fleer inserted into 1996 Fleer Ultra Series 2 packs.  They weren't inserted into every pack, but they're not rare by any means.  The box break I watched on YouTube had six or seven of these mail-in cards.  In other words, I paid $5 for a card that's worth 5¢.

At least it'll go well with the actual Diamond Dust card I purchased years ago, which by the way is an under-appreciated piece of history.  Back in 1996, Upper Deck won the hearts of collectors when they produced the first game-used jersey cards of baseball players.  This might not be a piece of Ripken's jersey, but it is the first game-used dirt card ever produced.

The other card I purchased was this sticker auto for my Green Bay Packers PC:

2015 Donruss Signature Series #216

My parents were Green Bay Packers fans back in the late 50's and into the 60's.  Forrest Gregg was one of the hall of famers who played on that team.  I paid $20 for this card, but prefer to think that I paid $25 and received the Ripken mail-in card for free.

There's one more card related item from this trip, but before I get to it... I wanted to share the final purchase I made in Ashland.  On the final full day there, we went back to downtown Ashland.  The girls wanted to go back to a few stores, while I wanted to check out Shattered Music which was closed earlier in the week.

Recently, I've been looking to rebuild my cassette tape collection and wanted to see if they had any from my childhood.  They did, but their prices were a little steep.  But I did find a few LP's for my collection:

The Police: Ghost in the Machine  (1981)

The Police: Reggatta de Blanc  (1979)

Blondie: Autoamerican  (1980)

The GoGo's: Talk Show  (1984)

Bruce Hornsby and the Range: The Way It Is  (1986)

The sticker price added up to $43, but he gave me a three dollar discount.  I probably wouldn't have bought these had I come across them at a flea market.  However I like to support small businesses whenever I can.

Was going to comment on each of these albums, but this post is already way too long.  Let's just wrap things up with a present from one of my nieces:

Fairfield Baseball Jumbo Box

She saw this at either Walgreens or CVS and asked her mom to buy it for me.  Here's a scan of the back of the box:

And a peek at the contents:

It came with a stack of cards that were packaged loosely in the box and a pack of 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier baseball.  The pack is headed into my rainy day pack stash.  And here are the highlights from the box:

The oldest card was the 1983 Topps Dennis Lamp, while the newest were singles from 2025 Topps flagship.  A few made it into my A's box, but everything else will be taken into my classroom in a few weeks to be used as examples for a project I do with my students.

Well that wraps up another Ashland, Oregon road trip.  A special thanks to Tito for talking your mom into buying this box for me.

As for the rest of you, thank you for being patient and taking the time to check out this extremely long post.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

In the Hands of the Cards

With the Los Angeles Dodgers fielding all-stars all over the diamond, the odds of me seeing the A's or Padres win a World Series title in the next decade or so is pretty slim.  Luckily there's a 50% chance that one of my favorite football teams will win a Super Bowl title tomorrow.

I've been a Seattle Seahawks fan since 1981.  To put that into perspective, that's the year I started collecting baseball cards.

Back in December, I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping on Target's website when I saw some UNO Elite football boxes on sale for $4.49 each.  I picked up a few for my co-worker's kids and set aside two for this post.

I thought it'd be cool to use them for a Super Bowl sports card simulation to predict the winner of tomorrow's game.

Let's start off by looking at the two boxes...

Product Description:

Box #1:  2025 UNO Elite Core Booster Set Plus

Box #2:  2025 UNO Elite Alt Jerseys Booster Set Plus

Each box contains 4 packs and each pack contains ten cards.

Scoring:

In an effort to not only predict the Super Bowl winner, but the final score as well, each player will earn their team three points (like a field goal) each time they are pulled from a pack.  Since there are four colors variations in the game of UNO, I will turn a field goal into a touchdown (seven points) if the color matches their team colors:

New England Patriots:  Red or Blue

Seattle Seahawks:  Green or Blue

There are also foil versions inserted into packs.  If I pull any Patriots or Seahawks, they will receive a 2x multiplier to that card.

Box #1 will represent the first half of the game with the first two packs representing the first quarter and the last two packs representing the second quarter.  Box #2 will work the same way except they'll represent the third and fourth quarters.

Checklists:

I analyzed the checklists for both teams.  After thirty minutes of trying to balance things out, I ended up removing any players (like Kendrick Bourne and Tyler Lockett) who are no longer with the Seahawks or Patriots.

That ended up giving the Patriots a big advantage with five cards listed in each product, while the Seahawks only had three in each.  To make things fair, I added two current Seahawks who are featured with their prior teams from each set.

Here's who I'll be looking for...

Okay.  I think everything important has been covered.  If not, I'll make adjustments on the fly.  Let the Super Bowl LX sports card simulation begin...

First Quarter:

2025 UNO Elite Core #120

Drake Maye gets the Patriots on the board first with a field goal, but a Rashid Shaheed was sitting a few cards behind:

2025 UNO Elite Core #149

Although Shaheed is wearing black and gold for the Saints, this card is a color match to his Super Bowl team.  Seahawks take the lead with a touchdown!

Here are the eighteen other cards in the packs:

I was happy to pull the Josh Jacobs for the Packers PC and my nieces will be excited to add the Cowboys and Lions in this break (especially the shiny St. Brown) to their collections.

After fifteen minutes, the score is:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Second Quarter:

Both defenses stepped up in the second quarter with zero Patriots or Seahawks in these two packs.

Shaquill Griffin made an appearance.  He's played in a pair of games for the Hawks this season, but is currently on their practice squad.  Even if he was on their Super Bowl roster, he didn't make this ten card roster, so he doesn't qualify for any points.

The halftime score is:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Third Quarter:

Twenty more cards.  Zero Seahawks or Patriots.  I sure hope the real game has more scoring than this.

Three quarters down and the Seahawks hold a four point lead:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Fourth Quarter:

I realize both of these Super Bowl defenses are elite, but this is a little extreme.  Eight packs.  One Patriot.  And technically zero Seahawks.  Thank goodness the Seahawks traded for Shaheed in November.

Final Score:

 

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

If this was the actual score, it'd be the lowest scoring Super Bowl ever.  The current record is held by Super Bowl LIII (Patriots 13 vs. Rams 3).

Sadly simulations and reality are two different things.  We'll see who the real Super Bowl LX Champions are in a little over twenty-four hours.

I was planning to watch the game at my friend's house, but I'm sick AGAIN.  I'm on antibiotics this time around, but don't want to risk spreading it to my friend or her mom.  So it'll be me watching the game at home by myself.  Hopefully the Hawks pull out a victory and redeem themselves after that Super Bowl XLIX tragedy.

I'm sure other blogs have already asked you, but it wouldn't be a Super Bowl post without this question:

Who do you think will win the game?

Who are you rooting for?

I'm nervous about picking the Seahawks (and jinxing them), but I've watched them a lot this season and they look really good.  I'll say they win 24 to 20.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

One to Open, One to Keep

1991 Impel Laffs isn't going to be for everyone, but to a collector who enjoys building sets and opening packs... these two boxes brought a smile to my face.

Back in May, John over at Johnny's Trading Spot sent me these two unopened boxes that potentially could contain rookie cards of Steve Urkel and Balki Bartokomous.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this product, it focuses on three of ABC's TGIF television shows during the 1990-91 season: Full House, Family Matters, and Perfect Strangers.

1991 Impel Laffs #25

Full House kicked off Friday evenings at 8pm and was featured on the first 26 cards in this 80 card set.  I watched this show a few times in high school, but by the time this product was released I was in college... so Friday evenings were usually reserved for going out.

1991 Impel Laffs #28

Steve Urkel and Family Matters followed Uncle Jesse and the Olsen Twins in the 8:30 slot.  Impel gave them the next twenty-six cards (#27 to #52) in the set.  I also watched a few episodes of Family Matters, but this was my least favorite show of the trio.  That being said... this Urkel card is my favorite card in the set.

1991 Impel Laffs #56

And rounding out the evening and set of cards was Perfect Strangers which came on at 9pm back then.  This was my favorite show out of the bunch and the one I remember the most.  However by the time these cards were created, I had stopped watching it.

Each show received twenty-six cards in the set.  Two checklists rounded things out to make it an even eighty cards.  Within each show... there are actor cards, character cards, and a variety of scene cards.

1991 Impel Laffs #53

Each box has thirty-six packs with each pack containing five cards.  That's a total of 180 cards.  I figured that I'd easily be able to complete one set, but as Bronson Pinchot demonstrates... Impel's collation was terrible.

There were four or five cards that I pulled five copies of and a bunch of others with two, three, or four duplicates.

When the packs settled, I was left needing twenty-one cards for my set build.

Some of you might be wondering about the second box that John sent.  I debated opening it in an effort to complete this set.  But two things stopped me.

#1:  With the collation issues, there's no guarantee that I was going to pull all twenty-one cards that I need.

#2:  Johnny gave specific directions.  Open one box.  Keep the other.

I know he wouldn't mind if I opened both, but I enjoy collecting unopened boxes.  For the time being... I have added it to the collection with hopes of completing this set through trades or bargain bins.  If anyone else is building this set, I have a lot of duplicates.  Maybe we can help each other out.

Thank you John for sending me these two boxes.  It's always a blast spending a Sunday afternoon opening up packs in an effort to build a set.  I might not have completed this one, but in addition to opening this box of cards, I also opened up a COMC shipment that finished up two sets.

Complete Set #1:  2024 Topps Update

2024 Topps Update #US100

It shouldn't be too surprising that the hottest rookie card in the set was the final one I needed for my set build.  I paid $2.50 for this card back on April 15th.

Complete Set #2:  1992 Leaf Gold

1992 Leaf Gold #317

I purchased a complete set of these black bordered parallels back in 2021.  Unfortunately there were a bunch of cards that were damaged by "binder pinching".  Well four years later, COMC helped me cross off the final card I needed:

I spent over an hour organizing my COMC shipment into stacks.  Some of them I will write posts for... but most will go directly into my binders this week.

Speaking of this week, I have most of it off (except I needed to go into school today for a couple of hours).  My goal is to clean and organize my office... which includes the remnants of John's care package, the COMC shipment, some flea market and card show hauls, and a few care packages I need to open up.  I'm also hoping to hammer out one more post, before my final week of summer school.  So stay tuned.

Until then...

Happy Monday and sayonara!