In The Zone

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Dave has put out notice that the shop will close 31 Dec 2023.  

In recapping my card hunting in the various shops, flea markets, shows, and antique malls in Michigan, I'm not going to go in chronological order, nor am I going to cover every card.  Mostly because I don't remember exactly and am lucky to keep straight what I got where.

The Collector's Zone, 1425 Wildwood Ave, Jackson, MI wasn't our first visit, but it was pretty early in the week.  It's paired with a jewelry store, and has a large selection of comic and gaming materials along with cards.  My host Stuart and I had been there a couple times before.  The proprietor, Dave, is always friendly and willing to negotiate pricing.  He doesn't organize and store everything perfectly, but believes in just having it all available for customers to dig through.  But it's relatively neat compared to some shops we've been to.

He had a few boxes of new arrivals on the tables (in the right part of the photo) that we dug through first.  I found several football set needs in there.  One box was all vintage baseball, including a lot of '62 Topps, which will become a recurring theme in these posts.  We also found a few other odd baseball items that hit some of my other lists.

I'm leisurely collecting the 2011 sparkly legends...the Gullett is an OPC upgrade...Mattingly is a set need....Nettles is the Craig back variation.  The others are the start of my official set build, before it became official.  More on that in a later post.

Dave also had a couple boxes of the typical shiny football I kept running into at about every shop we visited.  I tried hard to meticulously pick these out and not get anything I already had.  And then I went back through them and put back the duplicates.  Of course, I missed one as you can see.  (Hint: third row).  The first row of Bowman are all serial numbered except for the last one.

One of the more unusual finds was among several stacks of non-sport cards.  I have been looking for sets or boxes of this particular set for a while.  Most of the time the boxes are outrageous, and actually very impractical since this is only a 40 card set.  I keep thinking these are from the '90s, but they're actually 2008 PopCardz.  The above photo is not mine, I snagged it off the internet to save time.

Here is a sample back.  The info is rather whimsical, but interesting.  As you might guess, I just got them for the gorgeous gals.  I don't even know who a few of the dudes even are.

Here are my top picks.  I threw in Anton since he was in the alternate universe Star Trek movies.  But the women outnumber the men by about three to one in the checklist.  Perfect!

So as we were settling up, I mentioned to Dave that I was an aspiring Priest Holmes collector.  He said he had something I would like and pulled this out:

It's 5 x 8 inches and is a deluxe addition to the other two I have that are just plain red or white swatches.  This one's a sick patch that appears to me to be the upper left corner of his nameplate (the bottom of the H in Holmes) and the top corner of the 3, all turned 90°.  What a surprising find that was!

We actually returned a day or two later to see what else we could dig up, but I don't recall which of this stuff I got on which trip.  Thanks again to Dave.

Post-National Pause

I'm on my customary self-imposed hiatus from trading, buying, sorting, and putting away cards after spending a week in Michigan hitting shops, shows, antique malls, and flea markets then journeying to Chicago for three days at the National.  Hopefully, I'll come up with some semblance of structure to show off a lot of what I brought home and mention a few of the dealers and places I saw along the way.  For the moment, I just need to decompress and get past some house and car issues and get back to having fun with cardboard again.  I had a good time, but it's total immersion and I get a little burnt out.

Oofda....only one post in July.    One.    Sheesh.   I thought I had a few decent ideas for writing, but was so caught up in Database trades that they never came about.  Will really try to do more in August.  Though you've heard that before....  Again, I haven't lost the excitement, it's just that writing about it doesn't come as easy any more.

Anyway, here's a little tease from my loot....

Just a sampling...

First Stop On The Tour

This is my first post composed entirely on my cell phone.  I hope it looks OK, the formatting looks different (much larger main body text for one).  And I usually resize photos before posting, but these are straight off my phone camera as are most of the rest, but completely unedited.

So anyway, I am now in Michigan (since Sunday), and tomorrow my friend Stuart and I set off for Chicago and the National.

Monday, we went to Red Cedar Antiques in the Lansing area.  There is a card vendor there with a pretty decent selection.  I found a couple oddball items.

The part of my [hoard] that gets the most new items is my baseball player collections.  I'll likely return from Chicago with a ton of new oddball stuff.  Got a couple on this first stop.  Local (Michigan) favorite Steve Kemp appears to have actually signed this promo photo.

The flip side of the Foster disc reveals that this is not an Isaly's or Orbaker, but the less commonly seen (by me at least) Pepsi-Cola version.

I have aspired to find all the 80s Drake's sets in complete form.  And cheap!  So far I've only obtained the first one from 1981 until now.  The 1984 batch was a fair five bucks.

We also stopped by our friend Rick's shop over in Mason.  That haul I will post after the show is over.  Unless I get sick of posting like this,  then you'll have to wait until I get home and back to a normal screen and keyboard/mouse interface.  My apologies for forgetting my dang laptop!

Hope to see you in Rosemont!

This Was The XFL ... On Cardboard

Part of my Michigan haul back in July was a box of Topps XFL.  Around the same time, ESPN was just releasing it's 30 For 30 documentary on the league.  Invented by WWE leader Vince McMahon, and TV producer Dick Ebersole, the league shook things up in 2001.

Of course, it was marketed like hell, which included trading cards.  Topps 100 card base set plus 10 team logo stickers and eight "mega-foil" quarterback cards made up the issue.

Packs contained eight cards each...

Bet ya can't name all the teams!

Tommy Maddox and Rod "He Hate Me" Smart were the two most well known players.  Remember when MLB let players put whatever they wanted on the back of their jerseys?  That was an XFL innovation.

And they got crazy with the cheerleaders, too.

Here's a link to all the cheerleader cards, and the group shots on the back.

The league only lasted a year.  Check out the 30 For 30 on ESPN when you can.

Last Stop ... And Best Bargain Of The Trip!

For the last shopping day in Michigan, the destination was All Star Sports in Grand Rapids.  This was my third or fourth trip to the shop in the western part of the state.

It's one of the most organized shops that I've been to in Michigan or elsewhere.  They have singles from several years in the 2000s and throughout the 80's and 90's, plus a lot of current product, and some vintage.  They also carry boxes of current product, and they do a lot with pro team jerseys and custom ones too.

Here's my haul from All Star.

Completed my 2001 Update set except for a few regular player cards and a couple of the Who Would Have Thought inserts.  Also hit some red back 2007s, some current inserts, football set singles, Redskins, and killed a Parkhurst hockey set.  These all came from the set singles, quarter and dime boxes.  Buyback player collection guys were a buck, and a few Heritage short prints for $2.50 each.  Got the Victory rookies fairly cheap, but messed up with the 90-91s and got Topps instead of O-Pee-Chees.  Picked up a few RG3's for about half off sticker price, since he's been so successful.

The bargain of the visit, and probably of the whole trip, was what I call the Gypsy-Ginter box.  There were a few big boxes and binders at the front of the store that were on special sale.  Most were marked "Whole box" or "Whole book" with a regular price of 10 or 25 dollars.  A sheet hanging nearby denoted a sale that drastically reduced these rates.  Don't remember what the 10 buck ones went down to, but the $25 ones were $8.88!  Check out the one I picked up!

All this for just under nine bucks!

For the picture, I sorted them all by year and laid an example card on each run.  The 2014 and 2016 Gypsys, and the 2015 Heritage are just those stacks.  Everything else is the whole row underneath.  For example, the 2013 Gypsy Queens (the grey/green ones in the first row) start under the card laying flat and go to the back of the box. the 2011's are the most populous, at least they will be after I take a starter set out of the 2013 Ginters that presently take up the whole last row.

This box is going to be major trade bait as some of the batches aren't enough to start a set, or are of sets I already made.  I've got 2011, 2012, and 2014 Gypsy already, as well as 2014 Ginter.  The short stacks of GQ and Ginter are likely all for trade.  I'll let you know about the Lineage.  There are some duplicate inserts in a lot of these sets, as well as some short prints.  Send me your lists and let's trade!

And Of Course, The Dupes (100th regular post)

As with any show I go to, I inevitably buy cards that I already have, or buy the same card twice.  I've shown this many times, and this year's National, plus the Michigan Shop Tour v. 2.0 was no different.  Didn't have quite as many as I sometimes do, but there were a few.

1972 #587

This is what happens when you find cheap high numbers in a couple different places on the same day and you can't update your want list in time.  I suppose I could have sat down and edited it on my phone, but I find that much harder than using a mouse.  I'm old school when it comes to technology.

Here's one for my Matusz PC that was actually found by my friend Stuart, and was a welcome upgrade for the one I had, not for condition, but for the fact that it was serial number 001.  That made #132/199 available as shown here.

This one I kinda intentionally did myself too.  Got the Jones RC on the left from our guy Rick in Mason, but then found one for a dime in with a bunch at the big show.  Ol' Bert's even got that look like, "Duh dude, how can you pass that up?"  The one on the left is in my set.

Speaking of bargains, I mentioned before about the dealer at the National with the 25¢ shortprint Ginters.  (Same guy with the USFL set by the way).  I'm not sure if I bought these before that, or that these were in a package when I got home.  Anyway, my duplication is your gain.  Who's building 2010 Ginter?  And if you're working on pretty much any Ginter or Gypsy Queen set, stay tuned to The Collective Mind!

More set singles that overlapped:

Got that whole SportFlics set at once.  There was just a bonus Stieb in it.  Garner is the version that corrects the reverse negative photo.  Bonus Bunts and Heritage high numbers.  I've got tons of extra regular Bunt.

Looked at Elston and said, "That one doesn't look like the ones I have."  Well, it was.  Got Rickey twice with several of these '90s holograms.  And picked up extra sets of these Heritage checklists just in case I didn't get them with my starter sets.  Which I did.

Back to football,

Oversize Deion insert that I should put on the list site, Fleer Team Actions that I grabbed without checking from a quarter box, and those pesky blue parallels from the more modern Field Access.

And finally,

Wondered how I could get such a nice checklist AGAIN, but there it is.  Bolduc may have been an upgrade, and Duguay was replaced by the autographed copy.  I took about 18 of them to the show for other people, but didn't get any takers.

All of these are up for trade.  Thanks for tuning in.

The King Of Junk Wax

That's what I used to call myself during the last few years I went to my best local card shop. 

Since I had skipped over the overproduction era, I spent some time during the mid 2000's in the back room dusting off the boxes of the first few years of Upper Deck, etc. mostly filling in my player collections that extended into that period, and also completing the occasional set that caught my eye.   I was usually the only one who looked at that stuff, since everyone else already had it in excess.

I'm still filling gaps in my set collection.  At this point, I'm pretty much going for Topps completion, since all it will take to get 1969 thru now is a few from the 90's, and I'm warming up to a lot more than just certain sporadic ones from other companies.

Which leads me to this particular purchase.  It's part of a major batch that also included several more sets and a pile of singles as well (the others will appear in future posts) from the great guys at Collectibles Unlimited in Clio, Michigan.  This particular visit was our second in the time I was in the state.  We got exclusive access to what I'll call their "special inventory".  Sorry, folks, you'll have to earn that privilege on your own.

This particular item was previewed in the overview post I did on the whole trip.  It's something that most of you set builders took care of long ago, but I never have until now.  The premiere edition of Upper Deck baseball - 1989.

Got the factory box flavor and everything, which makes it nice, even though I usually like to hand collate sets like this since so many people are willing to send me singles.  But having the proper box already sorted is good in this instance because of all the other stuff i still have to plow through.

Now the next thing you want to see is card #1, right?  Well, I hate to disappoint you, but Mr. Griffey was not included.  I actually didn't see any raw examples at the National, so he's now on my want list.  The set starts with #2, Mr. Medina here:

But at least the rest of it is done.  I now have the first four UD sets, and am working on Collector's Choice completion too.  Don't think I'll get close to Upper Deck flagships for all the consecutive years for a good while yet.   Still picking and choosing which ones I like.  I'm sure I'll find KG Jr. for a price I like and can then move on to the next set.

Most Wanted Fugitives Captured!

In preparation for my trip to the National and another Michigan shop tour, I collected the "Most Wanted" lists from several bloggers.  And I managed to find a few!

These items are being packaged for mailing.  I have notified the recipients already.  There are a couple others that I remembered someone wanting, but can't recall who it was.

Found a couple 80's Traded cards for Dime Box Nick at the National from a dealer's box of all early 80's.

Then later, while in Clio, MI at Collectibles Unlimited, I dug these out for Night Owl.

Not high-dollar purchases by any means, but I'm just glad I remembered to look for them.

Now here are the ones I thought someone wanted, but can't figure out who.  Could be that they got 'em already, but if not, let me know and I'll get them out to their new home.

It's probably been a little while, but I swear someone had this on their wanted list.  I recall the reference to the hockey stick.  Who was it?

This one is still current year product, so it's likely that it got knocked off whoever's want list I saw it on by pack pull, single purchase or trade.  I want to say it's a Brewer collector, but it isn't the most obvious ones that I know.  Is it you?

2400 Miles and Several Monster Boxes Later....

...I'm home!

Arrived back home late Friday after three days at the National and a week and a half on my second Michigan card shop tour this year.  Put a total of 2400 miles on my car throughout the whole trip.  It actually turned over 100,000 just as I got home. 

Brought home a whole trunkful of cards.  I never think about documenting my purchases at the time as thoroughly as I want to, but I took some pictures of the loot along the way.  What I'll do is show the overview here and highlight certain items and batches in individual posts as I go along in the next few weeks.

Here's the entire haul straight from the car:

And everything I got consolidated and put end to end:

Quite the bulk load, isn't it?  And very diverse.  From different sports...

To different leagues....

And different centuries...

From really cheap...

To a little more expensive...

To absolutely free...

Stay Tuned for all the details!

Michigan Shop & Show Tour - Finale

Again, sorry about the phantom post listing last week.  Thought I might put this up Saturday, but it's been a cloudy and depressing weekend from both the weather and the hockey playoff results, not to mention the football draft.  So without further adieu...

On the last day I was in Michigan, we attended the Redford card show near Detroit.  It's a monthly show that sets up in an VFW building.  There were a lot of dealers who had just the local Tigers cards and merchandise, but enough others to make it a really nice show.

This photo, which I ended up taking pieces from (and another shot from a slightly different angle), shows my show haul (the loose cards) piled on top of some of the bulk boxes I got from Stuart or other vendors.  I didn't buy all that at one show. :)

A modest amount of 2017 inserts and some other baseball.  My main source of current inserts was John, who is affectionately known as "The Dolphin Guy" because he wears his Miami football jersey to every show.  He had incredibly low prices on more current inserts, star cards, and parallels, and had plenty to choose from.  And when you finished, he knocked some more off of that.  Wish I could come back to his table every month!

Also killed a WHOLE bunch from my 2016 Donruss football, along with some Classics, and 2014 Prestige and Score mixed in.  Again, most were from John averaging a quarter an insert.  Almost killed my Donruss base set from a couple other tables.  Of course, I made the mistake of buying a couple twice, and found I had pulled some fancier parallels instead of the regular inserts.  (Curse you 2014 Score Hot Rookies!)  I'll post some of them for trade later.

Got some shiny RG3's and others for my Redskins collection on the cheap too.  Poor guy, I really hoped he'd make it in the league for somebody....

I look forward to Michigan visits for hockey cards most of all, since they're definitely scarcer in my neighborhood.  Knocked off several 1979-80 stars, leaders, and singles.  Lousy picture...great cards.

The high point of the show was the chance to meet a dealer who I've been buying from for a while - exclusively 1960 Topps baseball.   Finally put a face to Mr. Marv!  His stuff is always gorgeous, and I was not disappointed in the latest selections.  I worked a deal from a list Marv had sent me a whie back.  He even added a few more from the lower numbers.  Then I tacked on these too:

Roger Maris, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle high number All-Star cards.  Suh-weet!  Mantle was graded, but I managed to extract him without incident.  (I'll share my technique soon!).  Have a gander:

I started my long journey home right after we left the show and got something to eat.  With my belly (and half my car trunk) full, I set off back to Maryland.

Michigan Shop & Show Tour - Part 3

One of the must-see venues of my visits to Michigan has become Collectibles Unlimited in Clio.  They're right along the main street in town (126 W. Vienna Street).  Here is a shot of the storefront from a few years ago.

It looks modest on the outside, but when you go in, there's an impressive selection of cards (and actually comics, action figures, gaming cards, etc.)  They've cleaned up and organized a great deal since our first visit.  So now the front room has showcases and neat displays of various items.  The far wall is stacked solid with card boxes that are clearly labeled.  That would be an impressive selection on its own, but a little farther back in the shop is a hallway and a whole other room that is nothing but stacks and shelves of card boxes.  Again, most of these are labeled as to their contents, whether it be by set or by sport (in the case of boxes containing just certain stars).

It took us two days to go through it all (again).  Their stock turns over regularly since they're always out buying collections.  There is actually another part of the building where they bring new stock in for processing.  But you'll have plenty to look through just in the shop alone.

Our haul for the two days doesn't look like a lot, but my lists took a beating for sure.

Believe it or not, there are singles from all four sports, some starter sets, and oddball items all here.  And at a great price.

Here is most of my haul spread out where you can see the diversity.  Highlights include some oversize player collection items, and GameDay/Power Play inserts, Redskins and Capitals singles, baseball and football set singles, and inserts, killers for 2003 Topps baseball, almost all my 2001-02 Topps Archives hockey, and more....

The elusive 1987 Hygrade Mantle "bat low" pose....

Several error cards from 1989 Fleer and 1988 Topps...

There are several whole boxes of 2001 Topps regular and Traded, from which I built almost an entire Traded set....

And we added on a 2006 Fleer football set with a generous amount of the rookies too!

So if you're ever in the Clio area and have some time for digging, stop by and see Matt and Chris and tell him that guy from Maryland sent you.