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!

the birds and the betts

there was no monthly collector's club show in july here in the twin cities and after attending the august show a couple of weeks ago, i think i know why. the building that the show is held in is an old armory in a first tier suburb and has no air conditioning. it was stuffy in august and would have been unbearable in july.

at any rate, i found some cards as usual. i am sure that from the title you expect to see some blue jay or cardinal cards, but actually i was thinking about this 1977 hostess mark fidrych card that i found in a 5/$1 box

it is poorly cut but that's ok.

there were a bunch of hostess cards in the box, and i grabbed a couple others including this horrendously cut 1976 hank aaron

worth twenty cents for sure. still, i wonder if someone was using their toes to work the scissors with this one.

the other part of the title is more obvious - i added a few mookie betts cards to my collection at the show. here's a 2015 topps "robbed" insert

and a 2019 factory set exclusive all-star game variation

i was also happy to find a cache of 2022 topps uk edition cards, including the "career year" inserts that were only found in that release. here's betts' card from that set

and here is the lone dodger in the set, clayton kershaw

2014 was not a triple crown year for kershaw, but it was the year that he won both the cy young and mvp award.

this same seller also had dollar boxes that were really 71 cent boxes and then even less when all is said and done as this guy gives pretty good discounts.

i found a few parallels from these boxes such as a green foil miguel rojas 2024 topps card

and a 2001 fleer ultra tom goodwin gold medallion edition card

one of my favorite card finds was a 2017 topps rediscover topps buyback card of joel skinner from 1992 topps

i appreciate this card because back in 2001, i pulled a 1992 joel skinner card from a pack of topps. they were inserting buyback cards in packs back then, but not marking them in any way. so, while i beat the odds, what i really had was just another 1992 common. so, i appreciate the stamping of buybacks these days.

other cards of interest that came from this seller include a 2016 topps heritage clay buchholz card

it's not a variation as far as i can tell, but buccholz is wearing the 4th of july hat and uni from 2015

here's the original 1967 design but it's a diamond cut vada pinson card

i also randomly picked up a 1997 upper deck collector's choice ken griffey jr checklist

that explains the difference between a subset and an insert

i was an annual collector of collector's choice but i don't remember these checklists.

there's another regular seller with dime boxes that i typically spend some time with, and i found some keepers there this month. this 1993 pacific nolan ryan texas express 27 seasons card

goes into my retired number collection as a sort of header card. i suppose it could also be a lurker card as rod carew is featured along with ryan.

a couple of new to me double play cards include a 2023 topps heritage brandon drury card

and a 2013 topps asdrubal cabrera purple parallel

here's another 2013 topps purple parallel that i picked up - it's carlos pena

i have cooled my pursuit of tatooine cards, but the color combo on this card appealed to me.

i also found some vladimir guerrero cards for my collection including this 1998 fleer ultra kid gloves insert

and then there is one for my name/number on the back collection from 2023 topps black & white

my first thought when i saw this card was when did cody bellinger play for the rockies?

another seller had some cheap autos and relics, and i bought the 1996 leaf signature series steve sparks card

just because of the knuckleball grip he is sporting

there were some in person autos in the box, and while i tend to shy away from these, i did pick up two bob welch signed cards

and one davey lopes card

for the collection. those were just under two bucks apiece.

the last dealer i stopped at had vintage bargain bins filled with oddballs. i chose a 1963 topps tommy davis peel off

and a 1975 hostess twinkies don sutton panel

with plenty of black bar showing on the back

that was the most expensive card of the day for me with a tag of $5

the last card i bought was another "bird" - a 1975 fleer cloth patch old hoss radbourn card

featuring his famously extended middle digit. here is the back:

as i was asking the seller about reducing the price of the sutton panel, i heard the person to my left say my name. it was none other than brian from highly subjective completely arbitrary! i've met up with him at this show many times, but didn't think to check with him before heading out to this one.

as always, brian had some cards for me, which brings me to even more mookie betts cards!

2024 topps heritage white border parallel

2023 topps stadium club mookie betts chief fantasy professional insert

and a 2024 topps royal blue parallel

that also features freddie freeman

a non-mookie card from brian that was great to see was this 2016 topps bunt joc pederson moon shots insert

it's numbered to 50 which belies the low end product that bunt was thought to be back then.