gone gold digging

i went back to the monthly twin cities card show held two weeks ago in bloomington, former home of the minnesota twins and current home to the mall of america. this show was a bit different because, even though it was held in the same suburban strip mall location - in an old big lots store space - we had to enter through the service door in the back. attendance at the shows has been so high, the other stores in the mall were losing out on parking for their customers who have not been caught up in the trading card hysteria.

it felt almost like heading in to an underground club with the makeshift signage. of course, the first thing i came across after entering were briefcases galore and a guy hawking some sort of lanyard that could display your psa graded card like a medallion. wear your graded card to "strike up a conversation" he said - more like "be like logan paul". no thanks.

anyway, at the last show i had left a 1995 score brett butler hall of gold card in one of the 5/$1 boxes, so i figured i would grab that card first. the seller confirmed that his quarter boxes were the same from last month, so i took a look and found some gold rush and hall of gold cards, but no butler. i wound up ordering the card from sportlots

to complete my dodger team insert set.

the missing butler didn't deter me, however. i still bought a bunch of cards. let's have a look.

i wound up spending $61 at the show, with $45 going to the guy who didn't have the butler anymore.  i started with his $1 box and took these:

he had moved these from his $3 box so why not for a buck (actually less after all was said and done) apiece.

these are the cards i took from his 5/$1 box:

always nice to find some montgomery cards in a bargain box. the mystery finest card up towards the top is frank thomas.

i got to the show right around 9am when it opens, although it is always open early. it was already pretty packed, and i found a spot where there wasn't anyone else and looked through a box of 2/$1 cards. i overspent on these four cards

but i was happy to find the 2021 panini donruss hershiser so to me it was worth it. for a while it looked like the box was going to have every other 1987-style card from that set except the bulldog.

i found another table with a 600 count 5/$1 box that was full so i was pretty sure nobody else had taken a gander. i wound up with 50 cards for $10

the 2020 topps mike piazza legend variation was the first card i came upon, so i figured it was going to be worth digging through the box, and it was. the 2021 topps update jon berti gold parallel will go to my double play collection, but i don't really plan to keep many of the non-dodgers that i found.

i stopped at one other table and grabbed another 16 cards for $4

a lot of the dodgers i bought have turned out to be duplicates because i didn't bother to take out my phone and check my want lists. you would think i would have learned my lesson when i didn't check my lists in march to see that i needed that butler hall of gold card.

there are a couple more shows over the next couple of weekends here in the twin cities, but i am going to miss them as i will be traveling. i still plan to add some cards to my collection while i am away however - stay tuned!

bringing garvey back

there was a glimmer of hope in late 2020 that topps was bringing steve garvey back in to the fold of their products. first, the garv was included as a "members' vote" autograph card in the 2020 montgomery 582 release:

this card was such a surprise to me. if the design looks familiar to you, it may be because cardsthatneverwere has been using the design (a mocked-up 1967 design proposal) to produce custom cards for the last year or so. garvey had been completely missing from topps products in 2018 and 2019, and was included in just a small number of releases in the years prior to that absence. i don't know the ins and outs of retired player licensing, but it seemed as though he had aligned himself with panini, who included him in a large number of their releases each year.

still, i thought that since it was a "members' vote" that maybe this new garvey topps card was a one-off. then came the 2020 topps x super 70's set that also featured garvey., and he was also one of ten dodgers included on a 2020 topps tribute deca-relic/auto card that had three versions with low print runs. now, with the 2021 topps series 1 checklist out, i see that garvey once again appears, although it is only one card - an autographed card (with parallels) in the 70 years of topps baseball insert set. i'm not sure if topps has an old sticker auto supply, or if garvey is signing new stickers, but knowing that they've come to some agreement gives me some hope for more licensed garvey cards in the future.