show me two times, baby. show me twice today.

as you might have figured from the title of the post, i like the doors. you might have also deduced that there were two card shows in the twin cities today. well, not today today, but today as in when i started writing this post (november 15).

neither show was the monthly club show, instead there was the biannual church show (put on by one of the owners of one of the local card shops) and then a "monthly" show that doesn't always happen every month. it is put on by the same folks who do the big show at the rivercentre space in downtown st. paul twice a year. i didn't plan on going to both, but when i left the first one, i figured i might as well head the few miles north to see what's what.

before i get to that, i'll share some of what i found at the church show. i purchased cards from four sellers and also received some cards from brian of highly subjective, completely arbitrary fame. the first seller has discounted boxes that have yielded some decent finds in the past, so i dug through for a bit. i started with the "half-off sticker" box that was autos, relics, and manufactured things.

i found some mookie betts cards i needed - a couple of things from 2022 topps

and one from 2023 topps

plus a 2021 panini mosaic encased gavin lux mosaic autograph

i was happy to pay the seven bucks for those.

i also added a 2022 topps stadium club chrome green refractor auto of zack short

for a buck because i liked the look of the card and his signature. it's numbered to 99, too. the other two items i took from this box were both priced at four bucks, so they were two bucks each. they were a small stack of cards in team bags - it turned out that there were 10 cards per bag. i'll do a separate post to highlight them and see if you think it was worth the gamble.

this seller also had some fifty cent boxes (or three for a dollar) as well as a quarter box (or seven for a dollar). i wound up with nine fifty cent cards, including a 2020 bowman's best cody bellinger insert

that i turned out not to need, and this 2022 topps stadium club chrome lars nootbaar card

that i will add to my retired numbers tangential collection because it shows murals for august busch and ted simmons (no photo for simmons that year). at some point i'll probably seek out the refractor of this card because shiny. and kudos to the cardinals for maintaining their murals!

to finish up, i found 21 quarter cards to take home, including a red holo parallel of keibert ruiz's 2021 panini donruss card

and a red foil parallel of eric davis' 2023 topps stadium club card

i'm still looking for an eric davis dodger auto though.

after that, i stopped at one of the bargain vintage sellers and looked through his dollar and fifty cent boxes. it was good to dig through vintage again, after not doing so for quite a while. i recently decided to revisit an old vintage project, so i wound up pulling quite a few cards. one of them was this 1962 topps elio chacon card

it is unrelated to the project i am working on - i just grabbed it for the lurker collection since i am pretty certain that is frank robinson in the background. one thing i was looking for was a 1960 topps coaches card, and i wound up buying six of them, including these three

i don't need all three for my project so let me know if you are in need of one.

i also bought a couple of vintage cards from the show organizer out of his vintage bargain tub. these two cards

do figure into my project, but i will explain later.

in between those sellers is when i saw brian and talked with him for a bit. he's still working on his venezuelan set, but has some big cards in his way. he said that he also opened a bunch of 2025-26 topps basketball and had plenty to trade, so if you are interested in those sorts of cards, look him up. we swapped cards, of course, and here is some of what he handed over to me

2025 topps max muncy diamante parallel

2022 topps finest flashbacks chris taylor gold refractor parallel

numbered to 50

2025 topps now luis arraez

apparently, arraez got his 1,000th hit on the field behind the mos eisley cantina.

the other seller i bought cards from spanned two separate purchases. they were set up on a corner, and my first pass ended before i turned and saw their second table. in my walk through at the start of the show, i noticed that they had a couple of baseball monster boxes priced at 4/$1. there was a big guy already camped out in front of the boxes so i figured i would circle back later. when i did, the guy was still there. i asked if i could start looking and you would think i had asked him to give up his seat altogether and while he was at it give me his lunch money. i assured him i was not looking to cut in front of him but that i would look through what he had already put back. he didn't make any room for me, so i quit after finding 12 cards in the first row and a half of the box he was done with.

there was quite a variety of things, as evidenced by these cards

1996 pinnacle eric karros starburst parallel

2025 topps heritage andy pages chrome parallel

2022 topps allen & ginter chrome vladimir guerrero

and a trio of 2024 panini select orange flash prizms - johnny pesky, dick williams, and jim bunning

so, when i turned the corner and saw a small box of "$1, $2, $5 autos/relics" i decided to take a peek. it's no surprise that deals like this are populated with andre jackson relics - these two 

are from 2022 panini chronicles and capstone, respectively. jackson has been pitching in japan the last couple of years with some success, and i'm happy for him.

finally, i found a 2025 panini donruss bob feller relic

in that box that is numbered to 99, and i couldn't pass up the old-timey wool swatch! i wound up with six relic cards for ten bucks and decided that was the end of the church show for me. it was still fairly early, so i headed up highway 100 to the other show.

the parking lot was pretty full, and i had immediate regret as soon as i walked in. i would say the venue was as crowded as the national - fewer people, of course, but in a smaller space. i did one and a half laps around the room and saw that is was at least 75% pokemon and those that had sportscards didn't have much in the way of bulk or bargain boxes - not that i could have bellied up to a table if they had. there were even some people there with strollers and one guy had a collapsible wagon. there was no room to maneuver any of that.

i left quickly and empty handed, so i'll show an andre jackson card that has been in my scanned folder since i pulled it from a bargain box at a show sometime in the past year. it's from 2022 topps gallery

it's a "private issue" parallel but it's nothing to be embarrassed about.

i was glad to get to a regular show again (the last show i went to was a disappointing mall show that i'll review in a future post) and i'm glad i stopped at the second show just so i know i don't have to have any fomo about missing those in the future. and, i'm happy as always to have seen brian, talked about cards, and added some to my collection.

calm before the next round

the dodgers passed the first test of the 2025 postseason, as did the tigers, cubs, and yankees. they did so in not quite as exciting a fashion as the 2021 club who used a chris taylor walk-off home run to advance from the wild card (game, not round, back then). here's a 2022 topps green foil parallel that celebrates that moment

interestingly enough, taylor did not get a card of his own in flagship in 2022 - just this one which is actually a checklist. he did get a relic card though

and was featured in some of the other topps sets so he wasn't totally forgotten about. no chris taylor card in update this year, at least not that i saw when i perused the checklist.

the dodgers dispatched the reds in the first round, saying hello and goodbye to old friend gavin lux in the process. here's a 2021 topps big league rainbow foil parallel of lux

that i meant to post prior to the series.

now the dodgers go on to face a somewhat familiar postseason foe - the phillies. it's a matchup straight out of my childhood (as well as 2008 and 2009), although not in the nlcs this year. there are a couple of familiar faces on the other side of the matchup that we will see - trea turner

featured there on a 2022 topps significant statistics insert. today i learned what "bolts" are. i've had this card in my collection and my scanned folder (as well as the uk edition version) for a couple of years and never bothered to look at the stat that topps deemed significant. bottom line is that turner is fast and scores runs.

walker buehler is another phillie. here are his 2022 topps chrome refractor parallel

and his 2021 topps 1986 chrome silver pack 

cards. i wonder if he will get a playoff share from the red sox, too. i'll be honest; when the red sox released him i hoped that the dodgers would bring him back.

i mentioned that the tigers are moving on, and here's a 2024 topps heritage high number card of andre lipcius

i show it because lipcius' only major league experience came with the tigers in 2023. topps was highly speculative when they included him in the checklist for 2024 heritage high numbers, and it didn't match up with the dodgers' roster decisions. these days it looks like he is in the white sox organization. 

now i figure i should show some actual dodgers who will participate in the series against the phillies. here's mookie betts on a 2020 topps of the class card

freddie freeman on a 2022 topps 582 montgomery card, 

and shohei ohtani on a 2025 topps 2024 all topps team insert

ohtani will pitch in the series, and i am looking forward to seeing him match up against kyle schwarber among others. no baseball tonight but plenty of action starting tomorrow!

the triumphant return of the mall show

i don't recall all of the details as it's been about four months, but back in february i went to a card show held in one of the many suburban twin cities malls. these locations have largely become depressing shells of their past glory, so i don't get to malls too often. the last time i was in a mall before this show, it was the mall of america in october for dinner at the twin city grill. that's good stuff and i highly recommend it if you ever venture to bloomington and the site of the twins' former ballpark.

i had been to shows at this particular mall before over the years, including recent incarnations even though the last few years have been disappointing as there seems to be more of a focus on other types of collectables (sport and non-sport) from the vendors who set up. this time, it was like the days of yore with a lot of card dealers from near and far. i recognized a couple of them and they admitted that they hadn't been to this location for a while, but they thought timing was right and they had hoped that the current status of the hobby would bring out the customers. 

one of these sellers i recognized had a nickel box of vintage-ish commons, including a bunch of miscuts. i remember buying a gloriously miscut 1977 topps davey lopes card from him several years ago. this time, i took this 1975 topps mini ken mcmullen card

that is slightly miscut and diamond cut. i will note that the mcmullen was the least miscut of the 15 miscuts i grabbed! 

the 1975 topps mini bob oliver

and 1975 topps (regular?) joe lis

are progressively worse, and then there is the star of the show - a 1980 topps larry biittner and kent tekulve mashup card

that is just ridiculous. i get vertigo just looking at that thing.

i even grabbed four football cards - three from 1973 and one from my lost love 1978 - that were fantastically miscut

the charley young card shares space with a checklist, while ed budde has the bills' dick cunningham encroaching in his neutral zone. bruce gossett's card features another kicker, or punter, actually, in bobby walden from the steelers. it's charlie harraway's card that really gets me, because that's jack younblood showing up. as a rams fan growing up, youngblood was one of my three favorite players. stud.

just before i found the seller with the miscuts, i visited a dealer who stuck to his guns and charged me $9 for 9 cards from his dollar box.

i asked him, "even austin barnes?", and he shrugged. i suggested that i should stop buying gavin lux cards and he agreed with me, but i persisted.

dollar boxes were the theme for the most part, but at least there was the opportunity to haggle, or in the case of one of the dealers the dollar (and two dollar) boxes were proactively marked as "50% off". i found some decent dodger parallels including a prism refractor

and a regular refractor

of mookie betts from the two most recent topps chrome platinum anniversary releases. i wonder if topps decided to take a break in 2024 and restart this set in 2025 with a true 70 year anniversary for the 1955 design.

these shows are a good way to pick up cards left over (i assume?) from card shop activities, like a couple of hobby rip night dodgers - yoshinobu yamamoto and shohei ohtani

this would have been one of ohtani's first dodger cards? or maybe these were series 2 rip night cards. i don't follow these sorts of things anymore.

my favorite pick up from this dealer was this 2008 upper deck yankee stadium legacy card

it's not just a roger maris 1961 season card from that expansive set, it's from his 61st home run game!

imagine the odds of pulling the card for this specific game from a pack. and then throwing the card in a $2 box and selling it for a buck.

the next seller was a guy whose tables were straining under the weight of a massive number of monster boxes with all sorts of cards jammed in them. i grabbed mostly cheap autos and relics like these four dodger autos

(that came from 2017 bowman high tek, 2017 topps finest, 2020 panini prizm, and 2023 bowman platinum, respectively), and this yankee relic from 2021 topps allen & ginter

yankee relics with a pinstripe will always make me take notice. as for luke voit, he's currently playing in mexico.

now we've made our way to cards from the first dealer i stopped at (and spent most of my time with). he had a couple of 1 and 2 dollar boxes in a corner of the second level walkway. the boxes had some good variety, and i wound up buying my very first 1965 topps embossed insert.

is that tommy davis? who knows. i had always avoided these things, even as i built the 1965 set. i may now look to track down the other dodgers now that i have a start.

2020 topps chrome dustin may refractor parallels

are sort of boring, but team collectors are slaves to the machine.

i like seeing shiny cards of players from my youth, so i picked out this 2022 panini mosaic george brett

green mosaic prizm and this 2023 panini prizm green ice prizm card

of willie stargell.

i will also happily purchase legend variation cards, such as this 2022 topps update christy mathewson

i tell you what, i would collect the heck out of a set that looked like this in its entirety. the simple 2022 flagship design works really well with tobacco card type images.

from clean and sharp to cluttered and nonsense, here are some 2024 topps parallels that i bought. this first one is the aforementioned (and recently released) austin barnes

he's got beach chairs and umbrellas behind him (reminds me of a day i spent at siesta key a couple of years ago). this series 2 holiday foil design is numbered to 50. here's the back:

jackie robinson number sighting!

i found three other, non-numbered holiday parallels, too

hot dog!

beach chairs and umbrellas, plus hot dogs? sounds like a summer cookout, and with the fourth of july in a couple of days now is the time!

happy (2021 panini donruss bo jackson) independence day (parallel)!

be safe!