Getting There Is Half The Battle - And Less Now

Attended the National Battlefield Card Classic in Gettysburg over Memorial Day weekend.  Held at the All-Star Sports Complex near the Eisenhower hotel, it is now only 15 minutes from my house, making it the most convenient show venue.  

Unfortunately, it was steadily showering when I got there, and I had to walk close to a quarter mile from where I parked to the entrance.  So standing in line was a little damp.  The show was pretty much 50/50 sports vs. Pokémon/MagicTG, but that's par for the course these days.  Those gaming cards sure are colorful, but they all look the same to me.

The other "as usual" was that the majority of my days' haul was the same things I usually find at shows now - namely player collection singles from the most current sets, and base, parallels and hits from my two modern football PC guys: Jayden Daniels and Jordan Addison.  An addition that I can make to that list now is Angela's guys: Brett Favre, Eli Manning, Peyton Manning & John Riggins.  

Here's what I got, but not in the order I got it: 

Some parallel '25 Ginter action with both the silver and Chrome Bo, silver Torre, X black Fisk, and mini Sutter.  This kind of stuff is hard to track, even when I try to make lists.  I don't put it on their web page, because it would make the listings way too long, but only having odd lists of certain years and certain sets isn't much help either.

Found a couple of the Manning boys, including a really fancy Topps Chrome Fortune 15 Peyton.  These were all in a quarter box, I believe.

As were most of these Brett Favres.  The first two are numbered, so they may have been a buck a shot.

The Modern Artist (blue) is /99 on the back.

The Resurgence is /275 on the top left corner of the front.

And finally, the first purchase I made was this Jordan Addison Flawless Collegiate Gold patch auto /10 for $40.  It was marked something like $175 on the sticker underneath.  The dealer said he was surprised it had not sold in four shows up until then.  I'm glad I got the markdown.  It still showed the three digit price on COMC, which is what I gauge prices with.

The Phoenix Rookie Rising Jayden Daniels is a regular mainstream insert....

The middle card is something else.  I asked the dealer what it actually was and he wasn't sure.  (It was the dealer's young son and he said Dad handled all the buying.)  They were priced at $25 and $15 or so, but I asked the Dad if he'd take $30 for the pair and he did.  I managed to find out later what the middle one is.

It's a custom from a WhatNot user (who's a Giants fan...??) and sells them for exactly what I got mine for.  I think it was worth it for a nice looking and unique addition to my collection, whether it's official or not.

That's really all I came up with.  There were only a few vintage dealers at the show, and they seemed rather overpriced, so I didn't look for my '61 set build at all.  I'll wait for the bigger shows in the fall.  Thanks for stopping by!

Tale Of The Tape: TCDB

Well, if not for the Ephrata show, I'd have slacked off here for another whole month.  Too much going on with the new house, the old house, trades and everything else.  Anyway, enough complaining...

 

 

Made a rare purchase on the Database a couple weeks ago with Frank, aka RockyCola.  He sent a whole list of matches to my wants and corresponding prices.  With the new toys I've been buying (zero turn mower), and all the expenses getting the old place ready to sell, I wasn't prepared to splurge at the moment, so I went through and picked out some that I liked the prices of and probably couldn't trade for otherwise. 

The package arrived from Canada, and didn't take a really long time as is the expectation these days. 

Opened it up to reveal a flat inner sheet...

...wrapped around four inner packs.  Each was bagged and wrapped in index cards.  I separated the four packs and saved the painter's tape, as I usually do.  I was in the kitchen so I stuck it up on the range hood.

Already, I could see there was going to be a lot of tape to be re-used later.  Nice packaging though...

Unbagged each packet and pulled the tape apart.  I didn't really save much of it from this part since it stuck to the wrapper.

Inside each pack was another tape wrapped bunch of sleeved cards. 

So this pack is completely freed.  Repeat three more times. 

After all that, I had this many pieces of tape to collect.  Started a second row!

But wait!  There's more!

There was a second small envelope for the oversize cards!

With another inner pack...

Which was a cleverly configured combo of four index card wrappers.

Made it all the way across twice in the end!

Which almost doubled my tape supply on the side of the computer desk!  (All that on the right is from these packages.)

I'm sure you're wondering what was inside cardwise!  The Bernie Heritage SP and Phil UD Golf insert were part of it.  Along with some regular 2023 Heritage SPs, some miscellaneous player hits, including something like this:

This is the TCDB image for a regular prism refractor from 2022 Topps Chrome Anniversary, but mine was a fancier parallel that doesn't have any image.  I got a black and white diamonds parallel of the Keith Hernandez too.

An insert for my Sergei Fedorov collection...

A very rare Priest Holmes 1999 parallel - Pacific Opening Day.  The top image is the regular base and the stamp is what makes the OD different.  They are all numbered out of 45.

And finally, I knocked out some more vintage O-Pee-Chees of my player collections.  Innocent looking regular fronts, but the cool alternative backs of the Canadian flavor. 

This was our notes after we both got our mailings:

Sent: Mon, Apr 6, 2026 7:06 PM

Got 'em both yesterday, thanks! Heck of a tape job. I will post about that on my blog :)

-LoQtus

Sent: Mon, Apr 6, 2026 6:29 PM
Awesome! Im glad they made it. Yeah I go through a lot of painters tape lol

Thanks again

-RockyCola

Ya gotta love enthusiastic packing!

Night Owl Knows Rock'n'Roll

Well, I'm back into trading on TCDB, and pretty heavily at that.  I posted that I had passed the milestone of my 500th trade on there, and got over a dozen new offers in the same week!.  At one point I had 21 active trades going and a handful of offers pending behind them.  

Plus, I got most of my collection back into the proper places - cabinets, shelves, closet, etc.  There will be another post on the card room soon.

So among all that, I've blown like three weeks between posts here.  I've got a couple ideas for posts after this one, so hopefully I don't forget them before I get 'em up.

Meanwhile, I had the images from this mailday ready to go, so that's what you're getting today.

Night Owl sent me this one that I kinda gushed over for my player collection:

It's the Archives black parallel.  I probably would have a hard time finding this one in the wild.

The rest of the package threw me off for a while.  I thought he had tossed in some random RockCards, which I had already completed a while ago.

I was like, "that's nice, but I have all those."

But then I turned them over....

They were all consecutively numbered, and had a 1990 copyright date.

There was a Megadeth sticker too, shown here with the last card in the set.

When I compared it to the sticker I already had, it was different in that it had the band name across the bottom.

The one in the regular set does not.

I looked them up on the database, and these are the complete set of promo cards for the Brockum RockCards.

Whoa!  Thanks Night Owl!

Here are the rest of them - Mötley Crüe and Aerosmith

Rock on collectors!

Two Boxes of 2025 Allen & Ginter: Diminishing Returns

I almost didn't do it.  As you probably already know, Allen & Ginter is the only new product I buy almost every year - including flagship Topps.  This year, I heard ahead of time that there would only be two "hits" per box.  (Not that "hits" are why I buy ANY product in the first place.)  And that the price would be higher, but you wouldn't get as much out of a box as before.  

So I considered just looking for a base/SP/main inserts set on eBay for less than I'd probably invest in boxes and singles to complete that much.  Hopefully I'd find second copies of my PC guys in base and inserts and maybe luck out and get a "hit" from one of them as well.  Boxes were going for $169 on most major dealer sites. 

But I didn't....

I found boxes at Bergen County Cards in New Jersey for $139 each.  That was only $10 more than last year, so I got two.  Unfortunately, they're sold out right now.

 
Let's tear in!

Have to go straight to the first pack, since there are no box toppers, N43s, or buybacks any more.  Take off points for that at the jump... 

 

First card was a musician dude (no idea).  First card I actually saw was the back of Eddie Murray's Sweet Victory insert.  Nice to start with the Orioles at least.  Forgive the warm incandescent lighting in my new card room.  Nothing is going to look white even though most of this stuff is.

So I tore through the packs and sifted out the base, minis, inserts, and shiny parallels.  (Shiny is getting to be a much bigger thing with Ginter.  Can't say I'm overjoyed about it.)  I won't go through every pack, but will just hit the highlights.  Above are all the base minis, A&G backs, black borders, (most of which will be trade bait) then a new N222, a Light the Night insert, and a chrome Matty mini. (Spoken for.) 

The other insert minis from the first box.  Birds and fish have been done before.  Trust me, I researched it a while ago.  Several states elected Cardinals, so these aren't dupes.

A closer look at the N222 and Chrome Matty.  I wish the 222's had retired players too.

Only pulled one Filigree this time.  Don't know this guy either.

And the Chromes and Silvers are at least one per pack now.  I'm already working on two sets of the Silvers from previous years, so I'm not keeping these.  Just need Bo, Torre, Campaneris, Fisk, Sutter, and Mussina in all forms.  Above are all the Chrome Chromes I pulled.

First hit came about halfway through.  Pretty decent player and non-white swatch.  

Second one was a really nice framed mini auto /25.  But I'm not a Survivor fan, or MTV watcher, so Ms. Fitgerald is not familiar to me.

On to Box #2.
Here are the minis for this box.   Beaches are another well-worn subject.  The Ginter Creative Team is phoning this one in for the most part so far.

 Got three filigrees this time, and two HOF'ers.  That's better.

First hit was a Bellinger bat piece.  This one will go to my Pirate/Yankee friend most likely.

The other hit was the prize of the break...

 

 
BOOM!  Double Rip Card!  And with one of my PC guys on the back!

 And it's #1!

Well, if you've seen my posts on how to deal with Rip Cards, you will know that the above images are AFTER I extracted the minis inside.  Don't use the tabs, slice them along the edges.

These are what I got.  A stained glass Oriole (who I don't know either), and an extended series Yordan #372.

And that's about it.  Pretty standard A&G fare, but missing a few things from years past.  I like the base design just fine, but the reduction in extra stuff just leaves the whole thing a bit lacking.  I'll finish the base, SP's and two regular inserts, but that's about all.