breaking in a couple of new (to me) card shops

back in mid august, i visited a couple of card shops that i had never been to before thanks to some work related road trips. first, i ventured into wisconsin and found a shop not too far from the minnesota border. it's been open for just over a year and looked pretty promising once i entered the shop.

i told the owner that i was looking to dig through some cards, and he pointed me to a couple of racks featuring monster bargain boxes organized by team! this made things easy for me as i focused on the dodger cards. there was a lot of bowman related product, but also some nice finds. the belle of the ball was this 2020 topps heritage cody bellinger action image variation

but i came away with a bunch more dodgers, too.

2021 topps stadium club chrome cody bellinger beam team

2021 panini mosaic sandy koufax all-time greats orange reactive mosaic

2022 panini prizm albert pujols red prizm

2023 topps chrome update gavin stone youthquake

2024 topps chrome update james outman youthquake

2024 topps cosmic chrome mookie betts launched into orbit

2024 topps chrome mookie betts refractor

2024 topps chrome update gavin stone negative refractor

2024 topps pristine steve garvey squeaky clean

2024 topps jason heyward gold parallel

a quad of 2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary dodger parallels

and an in person signed 1988 donruss matt young card

i also chose a card signed by the late joe beckwith

who was my dad's golfing partner in a tournament back in 1980.

i perused other loose singles on the counter, and grabbed a few including a couple of 2025 topps chrome parallels

i don't think either salvador perez or josh bell will get any mvp votes this year, but i didn't leave these refractor parallels behind. i also bought a blaster of chrome that was pretty much garbage with nothing really worth sharing here. meanwhile, a guy was busting a box of chrome at the counter, and i saw him pull a blake treinen world series champion gold refractor /50.

a few days later, i was returning from a work day trip, and stopped at a northern twin cities shop. gallery is more like it. they "don't do bulk" but instead had a small number of vertical cases set at $5, $10, $25, and "as priced". they had a big breaking area and a small office that was set up for online breaks, plus a ton of boxes of various product. someone was opening a box of some star wars release and apparently pulled a couple of decent cards based on the yelling and screaming that was taking place. acting on the collector's folly, he purchased a couple more boxes afterwards. i didn't stick around to see what the results were.

i was not immune to this siren song, however, as i bought a jumbo pack of 2025 topps chrome that was worthless. i figured that the next pack would pay off, and it sort of did with an autograph

but it was still money not well spent.

i should have stuck with sportlots which is where i have purchased almost all of the 2025 topps chrome dodgers that i own (i'll share in a separate post).

i did buy a single from one of the cases - a 2021 topps japan edition clayton kershaw jade green parallel

it's numbered to 75

with so much breaking happening in this store, i was hoping to find some discarded singles but they really did not mess with that end of the hobby.

i did make one other stop in early august at a hobby shop in superior, wisconsin. this was a shop that i had been to several years ago. unfortunately for me, they are now focused solely on upper deck hockey and pokemon as far as cards were concerned. of the three shops mentioned here, i think i will likely only return to the one in wisconsin. go figure.