mall rats and giveaway winners

yesterday morning i took some time to check out the near-to-me mall show that sets up a few times a year. they always include the weekend before christmas in their schedule and i wanted to only show up at the very start of the show for a couple of reasons. one, there was a club show on saturday which is more predictable in terms of product, and two, i want to avoid malls this time of year during later hours and actual weekends. however, i wasn't able to get there until the early afternoon.

to my surprise, the mall wasn't that busy and there were a lot more tables set up than the last mall show i attended in october. unfortunately, there were very few diggable boxes of any interest to me. hence, the "rats" in the title post.

i made a couple of laps and did manage to find some cards to bring home, and in hindsight i am not too disappointed! while i purchased cards from four sellers, i am only going to share cards from one of them.

this 2023 topps chrome james outman card

is a "radiating rookies" insert

and i was told it was a case hit. same for this 2025 topps chrome mookie betts lightning leaders card

i pulled these from a monster box of toploaded cards with no pricing. the guy behind the table said that he would price cards from the box at one or two bucks, typically. i built a short stack that included this 2025 topps heritage alcs/nlcs yellow parallel

and a couple of parallels from 2024 topps stadium club - sepia jackie robinson and gold foil roy campanella

the campanella isn't numbered, but the gold foils look like they should be. this 2023 topps gilded collection rookies cast in gold card of james outman

is numbered - /199.

as for non-dodgers, i did grab some of those, too. here's a gold parallel from 2025 topps update of the brent rooker/lawrence butler combo card

it's a nice looking card, and the back

namechecks big mac and golden gopher great terry steinbach, along with jimmie foxx and the immortal bob johnson.

here's a 2025 topps vintage stock parallel of marco gonzales

with the back

all dressed up for christmas.

i had no reason to choose this 2025 topps josh rojas card

which is a memorial day camo parallel, numbered to 25

but it didn't rocket up the cost of the rest of the cards, so i left it in my purchase.

last card i will show is this 2025 topps lucas erceg team color border parallel

and speaking of teams and parallels...

earlier on friday, i randomized the list of names/teams from my giveaway post earlier in the week. i was a bit surprised to see so many entries and decided to bump things up to four winners as a result. here are the standard three randomizations:

with the winners being tony, tom, mark, and crh614. be sure to email me your addresses at gcrl at comcast dot net  (even you, tom, just so i can be sure i have the current one). 

keep in mind that these are "above and beyond my normal number of mailings" mailings, meaning that there will be other mailings sent, too. if anyone else in the list above wants to send me their address, i'll pull a couple of cards for them as well.  

all told, the stack of cards i pulled from the seller were priced at $30 which was just above $2/card and i thought a pretty good deal given the scarcity of some of the cards i pulled. he didn't have any change, so i added a couple of scrub autos from his box to get to $40. one of the autos i grabbed was this 2025 topps edgardo henriquez card

the other one is going out to one of the randomized winners.

shows and shops and other forays into the hobby

one of the ways i participate in the hobby that i don't address much is that i sell on sportlots. i say that only to explain this news - wrigley wax is still collecting. i just filled a single card order for him the other day. not sure why the blog went/is quiet, but he appears to be still around, thankfully.

as for more frequent hobby interactions, i attended the mid october mall show. it was a big disappointment from a sports cards stand point, as the majority of the tables were pokemon focused. i did find a few bargains from bargain-ish boxes to keep, such as a 1994 topps ryan thompson gold parallel

and a 2015 panini cooperstown jackie robinson salute to the armed forces card

one of the few baseball card sellers had a few cody bellinger cards that i picked up - 2016 bowman chrome prospects

2017 bowman platinum

2018 bowman's best refractor

2021 topps 70 years of topps

2021 topps chrome black

and 2022 panini diamond kings framed gray

in which he is joined by walter alston.

i was able to add clayton kershaw's 2018 topps stadium club beam team card

a pair of 2023 topps allen & ginter mookie betts silver portrait parallels

and roki sasaki's 2025 topps stars of mlb card

to my dodger collection, too.

some other highlights include this 2021 topps stadium club robin yount red foil parallel

these 2021 panini prizm kyle cody parallels

for a couple of mini-collections, and these 2020 topps chrome frank robinson decades' best

and 2025 topps rip night ken griffey jr cards

just because. i haven't seen many (any?) of those chrome decades' best cards in the wild before.

a week or so later, i made an early morning, mid-week stop at a local card shop. early morning as in 8am. this shop opens at 7am on wednesdays which made it super convenient for me. talking to the owner, he said he opens that early on that day to meet some fanatics related hours requirement. it sounds like fanatics might prefer to have you order directly from them based on the barriers they seem to be constructing for these sorts of retail outlets.

anyway, this shop has nickel boxes that i hadn't dug through in quite a while. they had obviously opened some 2025 panini prizm, because there was a row of one monster box filled with it. i grabbed a bunch of these cards including cal ripken jr's

and then found just about a complete dodger team set

with a hye-seong kim insert, to boot. the only dodger missing from this nickel parade was pee wee reese.

here's another nickel dodger, a 2024 topps update james paxton yellow parallel

it's a laborious effort to dig through what is mostly base cards in these boxes, but it's worth it.

they also have team-sorted quarter/fifty cent boxes. that's where i found vladimir guerrero's 2025 panini prizm dingers insert

the dodgers in these boxes tend to be mostly bowman chrome prospect type things, but there are usually some decent cards within some of the other team slots. case in point:

that's aaron judge's 2025 topps heritage card. except it is also

bat flip variation! good times.

a few weeks later, i stopped at another store in the middle of minnesota while i was driving around for work. they had dollar-plus boxes at the counter and i dug for a little bit. i walked away with a 2024 topps black & white vladimir guerrero jr card

a 2024 topps chrome shohei ohtani all-etch insert

a 1994 upper deck all-time heroes manny mota 125th anniversary parallel

and a 2023 topps stadium club jackie robinson red foil parallel

and yes, i do consider that mota card to be a dodger card even though most of it belongs to the expos.

one other hobby participation effort to share - my first completed trade on tcdb! i shuffled off some 1971 topps cards to mattyb87 and he sent me some nice dodger cards:

2024 topps miguel rojas rainbow foil parallel

i am anticipating a few more miguel rojas cards in 2026.

2024 topps archives tyler glasnow and mookie betts own the game inserts

2025 topps heritage max muncy green parallel

2025 topps tribute freddie freeman

2025 topps will smith world tour domination

this one was nice to see - i hadn't seen or bothered to pick up any of these japan-themed cards as of yet.

a surprise throw in was this 2024 panini prizm don sutton pink ice prizm

which inspired me to add sutton's base prizm card to a sportlots order

and that's how you bring a blog post full circle!

reminder - add your comment to my recent post for a chance to win six non-base cards from the current major league team of your choice. results coming on saturday!