i remember september

i went to a card show today - the second one i've been to this month - but am only now posting about the september shows i attended. it's an embarrassment of riches, although i don't much enjoy shows landing on the same day as was the case back at the end of the ninth month of the year.

there was a church show and a regular club show and i found some cards to take home at each. here is a sampling:

2017 bowman 1991 bowman roger clemens 70th anniversary buyback

i am a sucker for buybacks. 

2011 topps update jerry sands personalized leather nameplate black parallel

it's numbered to 99 as you can see there. here's the informative back:

i had not seen any of these before, so it was nice to see a dodger in the bargain relic box.

2019 topps evolution (technology) insert

this one was fun to find because of who is on the back

finding any ohtani related stuff in the bargain box is rare, so even seeing him on the back of an insert that is not really requiring his presence was a surprise.

2024 topps update mookie betts yellow parallel

2026 topps finest mookie betts mini diamond refractor parallel

adding a couple of harder to find betts parallels was appreciated, especially at bargain box prices

the last card show card i'll show is this freddie freeman perfect 10 insert

from 2025 topps heritage high numbers

i will note that i also connected with brian from highly subjective, completely arbitrary at one of the shows, and we traded cards. i'll show off some of the things that he handed over in a separate post.

other september hobby activity included picking up a hanger pack of 2026 topps update. the only semi-interesting card i found was this babe ruth crooked numbers insert

that focuses on one of the most iconic single season achievements in baseball history

even though it's been eclipsed by several players since. i am not sure there has been a thirty home run discrepancy between the respective league leaders since 1927. that's a big gap.

i also placed a few sportlots orders in september. most of those orders included targeted cards to fit some of my focused pursuits, but i did fill out the cart to maximize value from individual sellers. as a result, i added a 2026 bowman ohtani

a 2026 topps finest roki sasaki

and a 2026 panini donruss james tibbs iii optic parallel

to the collection.

i'll share a couple of the targeted cards here in this post - first up is tom lasorda's 2026 panini prizm card

which doesn't scan the best. that's ok, because i also ordered two of the silver prizm parallels

one for the dodger collection and one for the dodger stadium collection. it's a nice angle of the left field pavilion there on the front and a zoomed in shot of the palm trees, included the three sisters, on the back

one more card i targeted from this same set was jim leyland's

i picked it up to add to my retired numbers mini-collection, as it shows his number 10 that was retired by the tigers very clearly, as opposed to the card i originally had in that collection. i can ignore the fact that his jersey has been wiped of the "detroit" patching and pretend that his hat is covering it.

finally, i mined my own sportlots inventory to pull a couple of cards for my permanent collection. two were these 1998 fleer tradition scott spiezio 

and 1999 fleer ultra miguel tejada 

cards. i already had these in my double play collection, but these two dupes go in the retired number collection as "header" cards thanks to the display of catfish hunter's retired number 27 in the background.

same goes for this 1999 fleer tradition damion easley card

except it shows rollie fingers' number 34 in the background.

i didn't make it to a card show in october, but i'll share some of my pickups from the november shows at some point. stay tuned!