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!

football is in the air (and the mail)

right after i posted about the cards that fuji sent me from his summer sort, he let me know that another envelope was on the way with some cards that failed to make it into the initial mailing. he noted that these included cards from my "nefarious 9" list of my most wanted cards. one of them that showed up a few days later was this 2021 score mark brunell card

it was one of my most wanted non-dodger cards, a "bonus" 9 cards in addition to the top 9 that are all dodger centric. not to be outdone, i also got an email from jon at a pennysleeve for your thoughts asking (as he does from time to time) if i need a certain card or two. most of the time (all of the time?) the answer is yes! this time, the ask involved a couple of brunell cards - a 1997 pacific crown royale

and a 1998 skybox premium d'stroyers insert

i don't mention it often, and i don't have it loaded into tcdb or have a want list, but i have a pretty solid mark brunell collection. 

now, through the interaction with jon, i took a look at jon's "yours for the taking" page and asked for a few others to accompany the brunells through the mail

here's a double play card i didn't have - 2003 bowman bret boone

and four topps archives reserve cards - two from 2001

and two from 2002

the 1952 topps jackie robinson looks especially nice all refractored up! thanks jon!

as for the remainder of fuji's envelope, he was able to hit the top three cards from my "nefarious 9" list, including a 1987 drake's fernando valenzuela card

that isn't cut too badly. the other two cards were kevin brown's 2002 upper deck sweet spot

and marquis grissom's 2001 topps stars

cards. all three of those completed team sets for me (in brown's case, the non-sp team set) and i was quite happy to take them off the list. thanks fuji!

if you are interested in helping a blogger out, i have since refreshed my "nefarious 9" linked above with some new most wanted cards. in the meantime, i think a decent goal for the football season is to get my brunell collection cataloged. more fun than watching the vikings, that's for sure. stay tuned!

nefarious needs, some dirt cheap

after noting that the longtime most wanted card from my "nefarious nine" list was off the board (not because i had acquired it, but rather because i doubt its existence), i figured i should post some of the most recent acquisitions i have made based on cards that have been on that list at one time or another.

i'll show two "nefarious nine" worth's of dodger cards in roughly the order that i added them. unfortunately, i no longer have a record of where they sat on the list at the time of their entry into my collection. i don't have pricing handy either, although there were only a few that would have been more than a couple of bucks.

1. 1984 renata galasso baseball collector series sandy koufax

this is a pretty nondescript oddball, but i added it to the list after picking up the jackie robinson card from the same set and decided that i should go ahead and complete the two card dodger team set.

2. 2011 topps gypsy queen jon garland sp

garland seems like an odd choice for topps to short print, but they did with this gq card that completed my team set. garland rejoined the dodgers for the 2011 season (double dipper post here) but topps apparently chose to photoshop an image of garland pitching for the padres (note the lack of a red jersey number) rather than use a photo of him from 2009 in dodger duds.

3. 1998 topps chrome adrian beltre

not beltre's most sought after chrome rookie card, but this one helped me complete my dodger team set of '98 chrome. i had added this shortly after i picked up his 1997 bowman chrome rookie, which is the one most collectors covet.

4. 2003 topps heritage duke snider/alex rodriguez then and now

for a long time i resisted putting inserts on the most wanted list, but i have a thing for heritage then and now cards, and this one was the only one i was missing that featured a dodger in the "then" spot. i'm hopeful that we start to see some dodgers from the team of my youth in the "then" spot in the next couple of years, meaning i hope topps uses hits and stolen bases as statistical categories for these cards.

5. 2004 topps retired signature duke snider

another team set completer after i mistakenly ignored it thinking that duke was featured as a met as he had been in the 2003 set.

6. 2015 topps opening day yasiel puig opening day stars

this one eluded me for some reason. it's not as tough to find as these cards from 2014 opening day, but puig was pretty hot back then so maybe that's why.

7. 2014 topps update zack greinke red hot foil

i wanted to complete the 2014 red hot foil dodger parallel team set, and greinke was the last one i needed to do so. i see he is throwing in arizona, and i hope he signs with someone to get to 3,000 strikeouts sometime this year.

8. 1994 panini album stickers mike piazza

needed to complete the team set

9. 1998 topps tek gary sheffield

i just wanted one of sheffield's card to complete the team set. i have one of each of the four dodgers - i don't care about the background design - and i consider the team set complete.

10. 2005 upper deck flyball giovanni carrara

i thought this one would be on the list for a long time, but it really wasn't. it completed the team set, and someone actually listed it on ebay for a buck or so. i figured it would wind up being a comc find but that's part of the fun of collecting - you don't know where the card you are looking for will pop up.

11. 2010 topps 206 matt kemp sp

this is the kemp card that has a different photo and different back

than his base card, but is not considered a variation because there is no card number. it completed the team set.

12. 2017 topps chrome joc pederson green refractor

i went for a refractor rainbow of joc's 2017 topps chrome card, and this is the last card i picked up to that end.

13. 2001 upper deck decade 1970s manny mota game used bat

i had finally completed the dodger team set as far as bat cards from the 2001 upper deck vintage set was concerned, so figured i would do the same for this set. with the manny, i now only need maury wills' card to finish the four card dodger set (steve garvey and bill russell are the others included).

14. 1990 baseball wit manny mota

i already had a mota card from this set, but i needed the one that was numbered on the back

to complete the team set in that regard. to this day, the first mota i owned is the only dodger card i have that is the unnumbered version.

15. 2010 upper deck manny ramirez pure heat

it's been long enough that i miss upper deck baseball products. this was from their final release, and their lack of care regarding logos (even though it's barely visible) means it outshines panini product with ease.

16. 2023 topps mookie betts stars of mlb chrome

i needed mookie to complete the dodger team set of chrome parallels of the overproduced insert

17. 1989 pacific baseball legends joe black

another card for team set completion.

18. 1994 topps gold roger mcdowell

this card completed my dodger team set of the 1994 gold parallels, and is the most recent card to be struck from the nefarious nine.

and now, just like the list itself, here are some bonus non-dodger cards. these all fit into a mini-collection or player collection, just like the nine bonus non-dodger cards that currently sit on the list.

1. 1998 upper deck fernando valenzuela national pride

i actually owned this card at one time but sold or traded it before i decided to collect fernando's post-dodger cards as part of a pc.

2. 1993 pinnacle delino deshields/carlos baerga team pinnacle 

deshields is on the front of the card, but it's the baerga side that i wanted for the double play collection. bonus glimpse of gene autry's retired number on the outfield wall at the big a!

3. 2020 topps allen & ginter 9 ways to first fielder's choice

another dp turn, assumedly unsuccessful as the point of the card is that the batter reached first base on the play.

4. 2016 topps (and topps chrome) byron buxton perspectives

and 

5. 2016 topps andrew mccutchen perspectives

technically, i only had the flagship cards of buck and cutch on the list, but picked up the chrome buxton at the same time. these are for my name/number on the back mini collection.

6. 2001 fleer platinum travis lee

it may be blurry, but that's dodger stadium's outfield wall behind lee, so this was wanted for that mini-collection.

7. 2004 donruss alex rodriguez

same for this arod card. don newcombe's mural is on the wall behind rodriguez, who may well be turning two here.

8. 2004 fleer ultra preston wilson

mookie's kid is also in dodger stadium, with steve garvey's mural in the background! this is one of two cards that will forever be on the most wanted list - the other is kent bottenfield's 2001 fleer triple crown card - because of garvey's appearance in the background. i've considered doing the same with thurman munson's 2023 topps stadium club card, but haven't pulled the trigger on that yet.

i currently have 10 bottenfields and the same number of wilsons, but only scanned five, along with one of the gold medallion parallels

i would love to add more!

9. 1980 topps football dan dierdorf

this card was wanted because of the black armband dierdorf is sporting. the st. louis football cardinals added the memorial for teammate j.v. cain who passed away during training camp prior to the 1979 season. it's only the second football card i have in my memorial collection, with the other being a card showing the patch the cowboys wore for tom landry.

lastly, i will show this 1993 pinnacle mike piazza home run club

card for some reason. this card came from a box set and is the lone dodger, so my team set is complete! i am not sure why it is here because it was never on the most wanted list, but yet i scanned it and added it to an early draft of this post. perhaps it was a card that was destined to join the list but was acquired before that could happen.

at any rate, there are nine dodger cards on the list today, along with nine non-dodger cards, so please take a look at my "nefarious nine" and see if you can help a blogger out. you will be rewarded!